Performing Queries
Here are some rules to follow to structure a query to return the information you may need.
- Queries are not case-sensitive. You may type them in uppercase or lowercase.
- You can use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT and AND NOT) and the proximity operator (NEAR) to modify and further narrow your query search.
- If you search on a specific phrase, the phrase words must appear in the exact same order in the query as you wish them to appear in the document.
- You can search for any word except for "noise words" (a, an, and, as, and so forth).
- Punctuation marks (commas, semicolons, periods, and the like) are ignored during a search.
- Noise words are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for "Smith for President", the results could give you "Smith for President" and "Smith and President", because "for" is a noise word.
- To use characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (").
- To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose the entire phrase in quotation marks and then double the quotation marks around the word or words you want to surround with quotes. For example, "World Wide Web or ""Web""" searches for World Wide Web or "Web".
- The wildcard character (*) can match words with a given prefix. The query esc* matches the terms "ESC" as well as "escape."
- Free-text queries can be specified without regard to query syntax.
- Vector space queries can be specified.
- ActiveX (OLE) and file attribute property value queries can be issued.
Boolean and Proximity Operators
Boolean and Proximity Operators are used to create precise queries based on the familiar operators AND, OR, NOT, AND NOT, or NEAR.
A search can be as easy as typing one word into the query form. But, unless that word is very unique, the result will be more documents than you cared to see. So the use of additional operators, or discriminators, is strongly suggested.
Example: If you wanted articles written by McPherson OR articles concerning Macintosh, you would type in the query screen the words McPherson OR Macintosh.
The word OR does not have to be capitalized, as Index Server recognizes the Boolean operator instead of the noise word.
Here are some rules to follow when using Boolean operators:
- The AND operator has a higher priority than OR.
- The NEAR operator will return a match if the words searched for are in the same document. However, NEAR differs from other operators because it calculates the proximity of the first expression to the second. Put another way, the rank of a page with the searched-for words closer together is greater than or equal to the rank of a page where the words are farther apart. If the searched-for words are more than 50 words apart, they are not considered near enough, and the page is assigned a rank of zero.
- NOT is used only after AND in content queries, it can only be used to exclude pages that match a previous restriction.
- For property value queries, the NOT operator can be used apart from the AND operator.
Use double quotes (") to indicate that a word normally used as a Boolean operator (AND, OR, and so on) should be ignored in your query. For example, "Search and destroy" will match pages with the phrase, not pages that match the Boolean expression search AND destroy. In addition to being an operator, the word AND is a noise word in English.
Likewise, a specific name can also be accessed by using quotes.
Wildcards
Wildcards help you find pages containing words that are similar to a given word. For example, typing cong* would yield words including Cong., Congress, or Congressional.
You can also search for words with the same stem word. If you wanted to look up pages with the word stem "win," you would type win** to yield the words "win," "won," or "winning."
Symbols Table
| Symbol | Function | Comments |
| ( | Opens a group | Must be followed by a matching ) |
| ) | Closes a group | Must be preceded by a matching ( |
| [ | Opens a character class | Must be followed by a matching (un-escaped) ] |
| { | Opens a counted match | Must be followed by a matching } |
| } | Closes a counted match | Must be preceded by a matching { |
| , | Separates OR clauses | |
| * | Matches zero or more occurrences of the preceding expression | |
| ? | Matches zero or one occurrence of the preceding expression | |
| + | Matches one or more occurrences of the preceding expression | |
| | Anything else, including |, matches it self | |
| Between square brackets ([]) the following characters have special meaning: |
| ^ | Matches everything following classes | Must be the first but character |
| ] | Matches ] | May only be preceded by ^, otherwise it closes the class |
| - | Range operator | Preceded and followed by normal characters |
| | Anything else matches itself (or begins or ends a range as itself) | |
| Between curly braces ({}) the following syntax applies: |
| |{m|} | Matches exactly m occurrences of the preceding expression | (0 < m < 256) |
| |{m,|} | Matches at least m occurrences of the preceding expression | (1 < m < 256) |
| |{m,n|} | Matches between m and n preceding expression, occurrences of the inclusive | (0 < m < 256, 0 < n < 256) |
| | | To match *, ., and ?, enclose them in brackets (for example, |[*]sample will match "*sample") |
Broken Links
To report broken links, email the
webmaster
with the page that conatained the broken link and the link name or URL.
Printing the Legal Compendium
Because the legal compendium is displayed inside a frame, you will not be able to print the documents by clicking the "Print" button on the browser windows toolbar. Instead you can click the link titled "Print This Page" or right click the legal compendium document, within the frame, and select "Print" from the popup menu.