dtSearch Requests

dtSearch supports two types of search requests: natural language, and Boolean.


A natural language search is any sequence of text, like a sentence or a question. After a natural language search, dtSearch sorts retrieved documents by their relevance to your search request.


A Boolean search request consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as AND and OR that indicate the relationship between them.


For example:

  • apple AND pear               Both words must be present
  • apple OR pear                 Either word can be present 
  • apple w/5 pear                 "Apple" must occur within five words of "pear"
  • apple NOT w/5 pear         "Apple" must not occur within five words of "pear"
  • apple AND NOT pear       Only "apple" must be present
  • name CONTAINS smith    The field name must contain "smith"


If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely for what you want to search.


For example, "apple AND pear OR orange juice" could mean "(apple and pear) or orange", or it could mean "apple and (pear or orange)".


Words such as "if" and "the" are noise words and are ignored in searches.

 

Search terms may include the following special characters:


?   Matches any single character. For example: appl? matches "apply" or "apple".

*   Matches any number of characters. For example: appl* matches "application". 

~   Stemming. For example: apply~ matches "apply", "applies", or "applied".

%  Fuzzy search. For example: ba%nana matches "banana" or "bananna". 

#     Phonic search. For example: #smith matches "smith" or "smythe".

&   Synonym search. For example: fast& matches "quick".

~~ Numeric range. For example: 12~~24 matches 18.