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About Search Queries With WebSTAR Search, you can enter the words in your query in any order. The search engine will compare them to the data in the index: it will find all files with at least one of the search terms. When it returns the results, WebSTAR Search will automatically rank them from most relevant to least relevant. WebSTAR Search performs a vector search , where every indexed document is stored in the index as a point in a multi-dimensional space (a vector ), and the dimensions correspond to terms found in the body of all documents. Normal queries are then interpreted as very short documents, and are also converted into a vector. The search engine then looks at the index for all document vectors within a certain distance of the query vector. Thus, the more that your query resembles the documents you are looking for, the better your results will be. That's why natural language queries, such as questions or descriptions, work so well with WebSTAR Search. For example, you could enter the query: improve performance of web server
and get back results ranked according to how closely they resemble that query. Adding Boolean Operators to Searches In addition to the vector searching, you can add Boolean operators to your searches, if you prefer. & (ampersand) used between search terms is the Boolean AND operator. It indicates that both terms must be in a document. This is very useful for getting a more relevant set of results. For example, to search for documents that mention both "Sherlock" and "Apple", enter sherlock & apple | (vertical bar or pipe character) used between search terms is the Boolean OR operator. It indicates that either term can be in a document, for example, to search for documents that either "AIAT" or "Sherlock", enter aiat | sherlock ! (exclamation point) used between search terms is the Boolean NOT operator. It indicates that only documents matching the terms before the it and not matching the term after it should be matched. Again, this removes irrelevant results. For example, to search for documents that mention "Sherlock" but not "Holmes", enter sherlock ! holmes
Grouping Another way to control the query is to explicitly group the terms --control the order of processing For example, you may want to link the terms "Sherlock" and "Apple" and ignore "Holmes". So you can use the grouping brackets " [ " and " ] " to specify how the search should be grouped: aiat | [[sherlock & apple] ! holmes]
Search Results WebSTAR search will automatically display formatted results of your search:
Note that the links for the results will take you to the beginning of the document containing the matched text. For an exact location, you must use the Find function of your browser.
Search Results Elements
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