Advanced Search Operators and Boolean Characters
This topic explains the Advanced Search Operators and Boolean Characters in Agility.
Overview
Using advanced search operators and Boolean characters, you can combine words, phrases, and characters to fine tune your search results.
Below is a partial list of options you can use to enrich your searches.
Wildcards
Add an asterisk * to the end of a search term as a wildcard to look for all matches containing that prefix. For example, if you enter "Cust*", "Customer", "Custodian", and "Custard" all display in the search results.
Boolean Operators
You can also use the following Boolean operators to combine search terms:
When searching for asset names, shorthand operators such as "&" and "-" will not work as they will be considered as part of the search string. In such cases, use the corresponding long hand operator ("AND" and "NOT") and enclose the search string in double quotes.
Operator
| Operator | Description | Examples: "Customer" and "Enhancement" |
|---|---|---|
| AND | Narrow search results to include assets containing the specified terms | To find all assets containing both terms within a field, type:"Customer AND Enhancement" (without the quotes)Shorthand |
| OR | Broaden search results to include assets containing either of the specified terms | To find all assets containing either term, type:"Customer OR Enhancement" (without the quotes)Shorthand |
| NOT | Narrow search results by excluding the terms specified | To find all assets containing "Customer" and excluding "Enhancement", type:"Customer NOT Enhancement" (without the quotes)Shorthand |
| NEAR | Find all assets that use two terms in close proximity to each other | To find all assets that use two terms in close proximity to each other within a field, type:"Customer NEAR Enhancement" (without the quotes)Shorthand |
Set Operator Order
Use parenthesis () to set the order for the operators.
For Example:
Customer AND (Enhancement OR Change)
forces the OR to be evaluated first, which is the equivalent of
(Customer AND Enhancement) OR (Customer AND Change)
Phrasal Searches
As shown in the table above, separating terms with a space is the same as using the AND operator between the terms.
- To search for a specific phrase, put the phrase in quotes.
- To find all assets that contained the phrase Customer Enhancement, search for "Customer Enhancement" (with the quotes).
Stop Words
In search terminology, common words, such as "A", "I", "The", and "8" are referred to as "Stop Words" because they are ignored when building the search index.
- On-Demand (or hosted) Accounts - Hosted servers are configured to ignore stop words when evaluating matches, so including them will not impact your search results. Terms in the Stop Words List will not create any positive matches in search results.
- On-Premise (Non-hosted) Accounts - The default configuration for SQL Server causes some unintended results when including stop words in search terms. For instance, searching for "The Dog" returns no results at all. This is because this search is equivalent to searching for "The AND Dog" and default SQL Server search logic returns no results since the term The is not found in the index. If you include the quotes and search for "The Dog", the search engine returns all assets that contain the term Dog because the term The is ignored.
Characters are Word Breaks
When a character exists in the middle of a text string, the search engine generally interprets the character as a word break (the equivalent of a space). For example, the term "Advanced.Search" appears to the search engine as two separate terms: "Advanced" and "Search".