Sun Microsystems Netscape Enterprise Server, Administrator'S Manual

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Chapter 16, Using Search 425
Using the Query Operators
Not all queries rank their results. Only those queries that can have varying
degrees of matching can be ranked. For example, <CONTAINS queries either
do or do not contain the given string, but <NEAR queries can be ranked
according to how close the words are to each other: words closer together are
listed at the top of the search results, while those that are far apart are put at the
bottom of the results.
Default Assumptions
The search query language has some implicit defaults and assumptions that
dictate how it interprets your input. In some cases, you can circumvent the
defaults, but here is how the search engine decides what you want as the
search results:
•
<STEM
—Search finds all documents that contain any stemmed variant of
the search word or phrase. The search engine looks at the meaning of the
word, not just its spelling. For example, if you want to search on plan, the
results would include documents that contain planning and plans, but not
those that contain plane or planet.
•
<MANY
—Search considers how often the search word or phrase appear in
the found documents and ranks the results for frequency (or
relevancy).
•
<PHRASE
—Search considers words separated by spaces to be part of a
phrase. For example,
Monterey otter i
s interpreted as a phrase and both
must be present and together to be found. Such a search would not find
documents containing sea
otter or Monterey Bay.
Note
In any case where it’s not clear that two words are to be considered as a
phrase, you can use parentheses for clarity. For example,
<PHRASE (rise "and"
fall)
.
OR
—Search considers each word or phrase in the query separated by a comma
to be optional, although at least one must be present. In effect, this is an
implicit OR operation. For example,
Monterey, otter is interpreted as find
documents that contain either Monterey or otter. Note that angle brackets are
not required for
OR
.