You can use this form to retrieve documents from a database. The name of the database is indicated in the title bar of your Web browser. Just fill out the form and click the OK button. The system will then display a summary list of all the documents that met your search criteria.
This section describes the following:
If you are new to the BASIS WEBserver and would like more information about it, or if you'd like to see the table of contents for the entire document, see Introducing the BASIS WEBserver.
The Search forms have been customized from database to database. However, at the very least, the form will always consist of search topics and search value boxes. Enter search values in the blank search value boxes. When you click OK, the system will retrieve the documents that meet your search criteria.
The other components that may appear on a search form are test operators, connector operators, and sort order criterion droplist boxes. For information about each of these components, click one of the following:
or just continue to scroll down.
The search topic is the value that you want each document's data compared against. The search value boxes are located underneath the search topic and after the test operator. Searches are not case-sensitive. The following list shows the possible search values you can enter and some examples. (If you want to know more about search values, click here.)
Test operators appear underneath the search topics in the form of droplist boxes.
These operators indicate the desired relationship between your search value and the data in the search topic you are searching. For instance, you may want to retrieve documents where the Search topic OBJECT equals PAINTING. Equals (the test operator) indicates that the search value PAINTING and the data in the OBJECT search topic should match (i.e., matching is the desired relationship).
The following list describes the test operators that may appear in the droplist boxes for each type of field. (If you want to know more about test operators, click here.)
To understand fully the functions of the following operators, you must know the definitions of stopwords and keywords. Stopwords are small, common words that have little retrieval value, such as "the," "a," "of," and "for." Your administrator determines exactly which words are stopwords. Keywords are any words that are not designated as stopwords.
Connector operators appear on the search form in the lower right corner of the form after the label "Connector".
The default has been set to AND.
The operators enable you to combine two or more search conditions. For instance, you may want to search more than one field at the same time. The possible connector operators are:
When the sort order criterion is available on the Search form, it appears as a droplist box after the label "Order By." This criterion affects the order in which the retrieved documents are listed in the summary display. You can sort the documents according to any field that appears in this droplist box. If you select $RANK as the sort criterion, then the documents will be sorted according to how many hits were found in each. (A hit is a term in the document that matches the search value you specified.) If you keep the default value of NONE, then the documents will not be sorted.
The buttons that are highlighted on the toolbar can be used from the Search form and are explained below. Those not highlighted are inactive and therefore are not described in this section.