Search Requests Overview
The NCGA search engine, dtSearch, supports two types of search requests. A natural language search is any sequence of text, like a sentence or a question. After a natural language search, dtSearch sorts retrieved documents by their relevance to your search request.
A boolean search request consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them. Examples:
|
Both words must be present |
or pear |
Either word can be present |
w/5 pear |
Apple must occur within 5 words of pear |
not w/5 pear |
Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear |
and not pear |
Only apple must be present |
contains smith |
The field name must contain smith |
If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).
Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches.
Search terms may include the following special characters:
? |
Matches any single character. Example: appl? matches apply or apple. |
* |
Matches any number of characters. Example: appl* matches application |
~ |
Stemming. Example: apply~ matches apply, applies, applied. |
% |
Fuzzy search. Example: ba%nana matches banana, bananna. |
# |
Phonic search. Example: #smith matches smith, smythe. |
& |
Synonym search. Example: fast& matches quick. |
~~ |
Numeric range. Example: 12~~24 matches 18. |
: |
Variable term weighting. Example: apple:4 w/5 pear:1 |