Search Tips

At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the full power of Microsoft Index Server.

Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.
Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.
Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, system and manager and system near manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.
Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not the Net, write the following query:

surfing AND NOT the Net

Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:

Abbott OR Costello

This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.
Put quotation marks around keywords if you want Index Server to take them literally. For instance, if you type the following query:

"system near manager"

Index Server will literally look for the complete phrase system near manager. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks:

system near manager

Index Server searches all documents for the words system and manager.

Tips for Searching using SQL

The SELECT Statement

Use the SELECT statement to retrieve rows. The SELECT statement consists of:

the SELECT-list which identifies the columns (properties) of interest,
the FROM clause which specifies the scope (the set of files) for the search, and
the WHERE clause which is the search criteria.

If the results must be ordered, you can add an additional ORDER BY clause to return the rows in ascending or descending order.

Example

SELECT DocAuthor, size, DocTitle FROM SCOPE(' "/IISSamples/ISSamples" ') WHERE CONTAINS(' "index server" ') > 0 ORDER BY size

The FROM Clause

The FROM clause of the SELECT statement is used to specify the files on which to perform the search; that is, use the FROM clause to define the query scope. You can use the SCOPE() function, which is the main component of the FROM clause. The SCOPE function can take zero or more comma-separated Scope_Arguments (that is, Traversal_Type and Path combinations). You can specify SCOPE with an empty argument list, or (). This is the default scope that uses the virtual root ( / ) as its path. Each Scope_Argument must be surrounded by single quotes (see Examples below).

In addition to using Scope(), you can also refer to any one of a set of predefined views of Index Server properties that are often queried against. You can reference one of these pre-defined views in the FROM clause by specifying the pre-defined View_Name.

Examples

SELECT DocAuthor, size FROM SCOPE() WHERE size > 500000


    SELECT DocAuthor, size

    FROM SCOPE(' SHALLOW TRAVERSAL OF "D:\Contracts\open" ',' DEEP TRAVERSAL OF 
	"/Reports/Year 97" ')

    WHERE CONTAINS(DocAuthor, ' "John" ') > 0

SELECT * FROM EXTENDED_WEBINFO WHERE CONTAINS(DocSubject, ' "index server" NEAR() "internet information server" ') > 0

The WHERE Clause

The WHERE clause of the SELECT statement specifies which rows in the virtual table defined by the FROM clause make up the resulting rowset. The WHERE clause consists of one or more search conditions (that is, one or more predicates combined with AND, OR and NOT) that filter out rows for which the search condition is false.

Examples

SELECT FileName, size FROM SCOPE() WHERE DocTitle = 'Financial Data' OR DocAuthor = 'John Smith'


    SELECT FileName, DocAuthor FROM FILEINFO WHERE size < 10000 OR 
	DocWordCount <= 800

SELECT DocTitle, FileName, write FROM SCOPE() WHERE CONTAINS (' "Index" NEAR() "Server" NEAR() "Microsoft"') > 0 AND size < 5000

The ORDER BY Clause

The optional ORDER BY clause can be appended to the SELECT statement to sort the rows returned in the rowset according to a specified set of criteria. Results are sorted by default in ascending order. To sort in descending order, specify DESC after the column name.

Example

SELECT FileName, DocTitle, size, rank FROM SCOPE(' "/MyDocs/Specs97", "/YourDocs/Specs97" ') WHERE FREETEXT (' "How do I index my HTML pages" ') > 0 ORDER BY rank, size DESC

Top

Legal