Querying with Attribute Sections

You can query within attribute sections when you index with either XML_SECTION_GROUP or AUTOMATIC_SECTION_GROUP as your section group type.

Assume you have an XML document as follows:

<book title="Tale of Two Cities">It was the best of times.</book>

You can define the section title@book to be the attribute section title. You can do so with the CTX_DLL.ADD_ATTR_SECTION procedure or dynamically after indexing with ALTER INDEX.

Note: When you use the AUTO_SECTION_GROUP to index XML documents, the system automatically creates attribute sections and names them in the form attribute@tag. If you use the XML_SECTION_GROUP, you can name attribute sections anything with CTX_DDL.ADD_ATTR_SECTION.

To search on Tale within the attribute section title, issue the following query:

'Tale WITHIN title'

Constraints for Querying Attribute Sections

The following constraints apply to querying within attribute sections:

• Regular queries on attribute text do not hit the document unless qualified in a within clause. Assume you have an XML document as follows:

   <book title="Tale of Two Cities">It was the best of times.</book>
  

  A query on Tale by itself does not produce a hit on the document unless qualified with WITHIN title@book. This behavior is like field sections when you set the visible flag set to false.

• You cannot use attribute sections in a nested WITHIN query.

• Phrases ignore attribute text. For example, if the original document looked like:

  Now is the time for all good <word type="noun"> men </word> to come to the 
  aid.
  

  Then this document would hit on the regular query good men, ignoring the intervening attribute text.

WITHIN queries can distinguish repeated attribute sections. This behavior is like zone sections but unlike field sections. For example, for the following document:

<book title="Tale of Two Cities">It was the best of times.</book>
<book title="Of Human Bondage">The sky broke dull and gray.</book>

Assume the book is a zone section and book@author is an attribute section. Consider the query:

'(Tale and Bondage) WITHIN book@author'

This query does not hit the document, because tale and bondage are in different occurrences of the attribute section book@author.

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