HP IAP Version 2.0 User Guide (November 2008)
3 Query expression syntax and
matching
Query expression syntax a nd ma tching describes the IAP Web Interface syntax to use to search and
retrieve archived documents (filesoremailmessages),andexplainshowqueriesarematchedagainst
documents.
Major topics include:
•
Query expressions, page 37
•
Word characters, page 37
•
Letters and digits in different character sets, page 38
•
Matching words, page 39
•
Matching similar words,page40
•
Matching word sequences, page 40
•
Boolean query expressions, page 43
• Nested Boolean query expressions,page44
• Quer y expression examples,page44
Query expressions
Query ex
pressions can be as simple or as complex as needed. The essential idea behind document
retrieval is that query words are compared with document words to find a match. You can also:
• Look for document words that are textually similar, but not necessarily identical, to query words.
See “Mat
ching similar words” on page 40.
• Look for word sequences in a document: words that are near each other, and in a particular
order. See “Matching word sequences”onpage40.
• Combin
e quer y words using logical (Boolean) operators (AND, OR, NOT). See
“Boolean query expressions”onpage43.
Together, these query constructs provide considerable power to find what you need, provided you
learn to use them well.
The wa
y query expressions are interpreted is similar to the way documents are indexed when archi ved.
Text is parsed (broken down) into words. Remaining characters are considered separators and ignored.
Quer y expressions are fundamentally composed of words, no matter how complex the expression.
For indexing and searching, a word need not belong to a natural language, such as English. For
examp
le, wt6_ht3 is a valid document word or query word. Query words can contain wildcards,
such as in f??t.
Word characters
When the system examines a query expression to determine its words, some characters are not included
in query words, but are treated as word separators. When a document is archived, indexing determines
which document words are available for searching in the same way.
Learning the rules of creating query words means also learning the rules of document indexing and,
therefore, what words you can search for.
User Guide
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