FactFinder Search syntax

The search server supports a rich query syntax and a variety of request parameters that allows to refine search behavior and results.

Exact search

Prefixing a term with a plus sign + forces an exact match for that term. If the term is a phrase (multiple words), enclose it in quotation marks ""to search for the exact phrase.

For example:

• +exact will search for the term "exact" in its exact form,

• "exact phrase" will search for the entire phrase "exact phrase" exactly as written.

The + operator affects only the word immediately following it, while quotation marks "" cause everything inside the quotes to be matched exactly. Using these can be useful for things like article numbers or known exact strings that should not be fuzzily matched or altered by the search logic.

Excluding terms

Prefixing a term with a minus sign (-) will exclude results that contain that term.

For example:

• search term -excludedWord will return results for "search term" but omit any results that include "excludedWord".

• search -excludedWord term will return same results as query above, as the - operator only affects the term directly after it.

If multiple words must be excluded, each of them has to be prefixed by a minus sign -:

search term –unwantedWord1 –ununwantedWord2

Wildcards

FactFinder Search supports the use of wildcard characters ? and * within search terms. A question mark (?) stands for a single arbitrary character, and an asterisk (*) stands for any number of characters (including zero characters).

For example:

• search?term will match any single character in place of the ? (such as "search term" or "search1term").

• search* will match any extension of "search" (such as "searching", "searchTerm", or just "search").

• *term could match any ending with "term" (like "longterm" or "term" by itself).

• *earch* will match any string that contains "earch" (e.g., "searchterm", "researcher").

• ?rch* will match any string where any single character precedes "rch" and then any continuation after

When the search term contains any wildcard character, FactFinder fault-tolerance and spell correction mechanisms are disabled for the entire query. In other words, once a wildcard is used in the search term, all terms in that query are treated as literal strings.

For example:

Normally a query for "search term" might tolerate minor spelling errors, but the query search ?erm (with a wildcard) will treat "search" and "?erm" as exact patterns to match (in this case "search" exactly and any one character followed by "erm"). Thus, use wildcards carefully only when needed for pattern matching.

When using * at the beginning or end of a word, note that the search will try to match from the edges of the word. For example, sea*rm would match "searchterm" (because the pattern starts at the beginning "sea" and ends with "rm") but would not match "sea storm" (because there is a space, and the pattern * does not cross word boundaries in that way).

There are also some restrictions on combining wildcards with other operators: +, -, or quotation marks cannot be used on the same word that contains a wildcard. For instance, +exact* is not a valid query (plus and asterisk cannot be combined on the same term). However, different types of operators can still be combined on different words in the query. For example, +exact -exclude sea*term is a valid query, as the first word uses + for exact matching, the second word uses - to exclude "exclude", and the third uses * as a wildcard. Additionally, wildcards cannot be used inside a quoted phrase (since a quoted phrase is meant to be taken exactly, it cannot have placeholders).

Combining search terms

FactFinder Search allows combining multiple terms with boolean OR or AND operators for more complex queries:

• Use || (double vertical bars) to combine terms with a logical OR. This means results containing either term will be returned. For example, Trousers || Jacket will find results that contain "Trousers" or "Jacket"

• Use && (double ampersands) to combine terms with a logical AND. This means only results containing all the specified terms will be returned. For example, Trousers && Jeans will return results that contain both "Trousers" and "Jeans".

The combine operators are evaluated from left to right. There are no precedence rules. Parentheses are not supported.