description

A description of the fields defined for the field-group element. This value appears as a box label for the area of the page that contains the specified fields.

field-ref

One field definition for a field in the field group. Use the simple field names of the fields with their corresponding objects as the root. For example, the path to the FirstName field in the Person object is “Person.FirstName”. You can define multiple field-ref elements for each field group, each of which are further configured by the following two optional attributes.

field-ref/required

An indicator of whether the field is required in order to perform a search. Specify any of the following values: 

• true – The corresponding field is required to perform the search. These fields are marked with an asterisk (*) on the search page.

• false – The corresponding field is not required to perform the search. If the required attribute is not defined, the default is false.

• one of – The corresponding fields with this designation are a group of search criteria, at least one of which is required to perform the search. This designation specifies that at least one field in the group of fields with the “one of” designation is required. If a group of fields is designated as “one of”, those fields are marked with a dagger (†) on the search page.

If you make a field required for a search, it is a good idea to make it required when creating a record as well by specifying true for the required property for the field in object.xml. Otherwise, searches performed from the MIDM could result in no possible matches even though possible matches exist.

field-ref/choice

An indicator of whether the field allows you to search by a range of values rather than an exact value. Specify any of the following values: 

• exact – The search is performed on the exact value entered (wildcard characters may be allowed). If the choice attribute is not specified, this is the default value.

• range – The search is performed on a range of values based on the entered search criteria. Fields with this designation appear twice on the search page, once with “From” appended to the field label and once with “to” appended to the field label. If you specify “range” for a field in a search that uses a blocking query, be sure to modify the query block in query.xml accordingly.

You can specify the same field for both exact and range searching by adding it twice to the field list with different attribute values, giving the choice of performing an exact search or a range search from the MIDM. For more information about range searching, see Range Searching in Understanding Sun Master Index Configuration Options .