Partial mode

In Partial mode, results must contain text matching at least a certain number of user search query terms, according to the rules listed in this topic.

In Partial mode, results must contain text matching search query terms, according to the following rules:

The MIN_WORDS_INCLUDED setting specifies the minimum number of user query terms that each result must match. If there are not enough terms in the original query to satisfy this rule, then the entire query must match.
The MAX_WORDS_OMITTED setting specifies the maximum number of user query terms that can be ignored in the user query. If MAX_WORDS_OMITTED value is set to zero, any number of words can be ignored.

You can specify both of these settings with the PARTIAL_MATCH element in a SEARCH_INTERFACE configuration.

In Partial mode, result sets always include all of the results that an All query have produced, and possibly additional results as well.

Interaction of Partial mode and stop words

The presence of a stop word in a query reduces the minimum term count requirement for a document to match when Partial mode is used. Endeca Server treats stop words in a query as terms that match every document in the entire document set when counting how many terms must match a given query. Therefore, the presence of a stop word in a query reduces the minimum term count requirement for a document to match by one, the presence of two stop words reduces it by two, and so on. In practical terms, it means the result set may be both larger and more general than expected.

For example, consider a four-term query (such as Medical Society of America) against a search interface configured to allow Partial modes to require three terms to match. If one of those four terms (in this case of) is a stop word, only two of the other terms have to match, meaning results such as Botanical Society of America or Medical Society Reunion would be included in the set.