Appendix B Advanced Search for Online Documentation

You can use advanced syntax to create complex queries when searching the Identity Manager online documentation. These are:


Note	You can use wildcard characters and query operators in the same search.

Wildcard Characters

Wildcards are special characters that represent other characters, or groups of characters, in a search.

Table B-1 Supported Wildcard Characters
Wildcard Character	What it does
Question mark (?)	Matches any single character. For example, searching for t?p matches the words tap, tip, and top. Searching for ball???? matches the words ballpark, ballroom, and ballyhoo, but does not find ballet or balloon, because these do not contain exactly four letters after “ball.”
Asterisk (*)	Matches any group of characters. For example, searching for comp* finds matches to any word starting with the letters comp, such as computer, company, or comptroller.

Query Operators

Query operators allow you to combine, modify, or exclude elements of a search. You can type query operators in upper, lower, or mixed case. Generally, query operators begin and end with angle brackets, such as <CONTAINS>.

Rules of Precedence

When you use more than one type of operator in a query, then rules of precedence and parentheses determine the scope of operators. The AND operator takes precendence over the OR operator. For example, the query:

If you want the search feature to interpret “adapter” and “attribute” as alternative terms to be found with “resource”, then you must use parentheses, as in:

Default Operators

When you type a sequence of query terms or elements without specifying an operator, the standard, default operator <AND> is used to combine query elements.

If a query consists of single words without an explicit unary term operator (such as <EXACT>, <MORPH>, or <EXPAND>), then they are assumed to be governed by the default term operator <MORPH>.

The following table lists the query operators that are most commonly used for online documentation search.


Note	Basic Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT), and special character operators (such as <, =, and !=) do not require brackets.

Table B-2 Commonly Used Query Operators for Online Documentation Searches
Operator	Description	Example
<AND> or AND	Adds mandatory criteria to the search.	Searching for “apples AND oranges” returns matches that include “apples “and “oranges” in any order. It ignores documents containing only one word.
<CASE>	Case-matches the following term or terms. Note: Identity Manager automatically assumes that upper case or capitalized query terms should be matched as case-sensitive, so <CASE> is not necessary. Lower case terms are treated as case-insensitive, so you must use <CASE> with these to match only lower case.	Searching for “<CASE> bill” finds matches to “bill” but not to “Bill”.
<EXACT>	Finds documents containing the exact word specified.	Searching for “<EXACT> soft” finds documents containing the word “soft,” but does not find documents containing “softest” or “softer”.
<MORPH>	Finds documents that are morphological variations of the specified word, including plurals, past tenses, and complex forms involving prefixes, suffixes, and compound words. Will also use knowlege from a lexicon to correctly handle irregular forms.	Searching for “<MORPH> surf” finds documents containing inferable variants of the word “surf”, such as “surfs”, “surfed”, and “surfing”, as well as those involving prefixes (“resurf”) and compounds (“surfboard”).
<NEAR>	Finds documents in which the specified words are within 1000 words of each other. The closer the words, the higher the document appears in the search results.	Searching for “resource <NEAR> configuration” finds documents containing both words, with no more than 1000 words between.
<NEAR/n>	Finds documents in which words are within n words of each other. Note: The value of n must be between 1 and 1024.	Searching for “buy <NEAR/3> sell” finds documents containing “buy low and sell high” because there are no more than three words between “buy” and “sell.”
<NOT> or NOT	Finds documents that do not contain a specific word or phrase.	Searching for “surf <AND> <NOT> channel” finds documents containing “surf” but not “channel.”

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Sun Java[TM] System Identity Manager 7.1 Admininstration