Operators

An operator represents logic to be applied to a search element. This logic defines the qualifications that a document must meet to be retrieved. You can use operators to refine your search or to influence the results in other ways.

For example, you can construct an HTML form for conducting searches. In the form, you can search for a single term. You can refine the search by limiting the search scope in a number of ways. Operators are available for limiting a query to a sentence or paragraph, and you can search words based on proximity.

Ordinarily, you use operators in explicit searches, as follows:

"<operator>search_string"

The following operator types are available:

Operator type	Purpose
Concept	Identifies a concept in a document by combining the meanings of search elements.
Relational	Searches fields in a collection.
Evidence	Specifies basic and intelligent word searches.
Proximity	Specifies the relative location of words in a document.
Score	Manipulates the score returned by a search element. You can set the score percentage display to four decimal places.

The following table shows the operators, according to type, that are available for conducting searches of ColdFusion Verity collections:

Concept	Relational	Evidence	Proximity	Score
ACCRUE	<	STEM	NEAR	YESNO
ALL	<=	WILDCARD	NEAR/N	PRODUCT
AND	=	WORD	PARAGRAPH	SUM
ANY	>	THESAURUS	PHRASE	COMPLEMENT
OR	>=	SOUNDEX	SENTENCE
	CONTAINS	TYPO/N	IN
	MATCHES
	STARTS
	ENDS
	SUBSTRING

Concept operators

Concept operators combine the meaning of search elements to identify a concept in a document. Documents retrieved using concept operators are ranked by relevance. The following table describes each concept operator:

Operator	Description
AND	Selects documents that contain all the search elements that you specify.
OR	Selects documents that show evidence of at least one of the search elements that you specify.
ACCRUE	Selects documents that include at least one of the search elements that you specify. Documents are ranked based on the number of search elements found.
ALL	Selects documents that contain all of the search elements that you specify. A score of 1.00 is assigned to each retrieved document. ALL and AND retrieve the same results, but queries using ALL are always assigned a score of 1.00.
ANY	Selects documents that contain at least one of the search elements that you specify. A score of 1.00 is assigned to each retrieved document. ANY and OR retrieve the same results, but queries using ANY are always assigned a score of 1.00.

Relational operators

Relational operators search document fields (such as AUTHOR) that you defined in the collection. Documents containing specified field values are returned. Documents retrieved using relational operators are not ranked by relevance, and you cannot use the MANY modifier with relational operators.

You use the following operators for numeric and date comparisons:

Operator	Description
=	Equal
!=	Not equal
>	Greater than
>=	Greater than or equal to
<	Less than
<=	Less than or equal to

For example, to search for documents that contain values for 1999 through 2002, you perform either of the following searches:

A simple search for 1999,2000,2001,2002
An explicit search using the = operator: >=1999,<=2002

If a document field named PAGES is defined, you can search for documents that are 5 pages or less by entering PAGES < 5 in your search. Similarly, if a document field named DATE is defined, you can search for documents dated prior to and including December 31, 1999 by entering DATE <= 12-31-99 in your search.

The following relational operators compare text and match words and parts of words:

Operator	Description	Example
CONTAINS	Selects documents by matching the word or phrase that you specify with the values stored in a specific document field. Documents are selected only if the search elements specified appear in the same sequential and contiguous order in the field value.	In a document field named TITLE, to retrieve documents whose titles contain music, musical, or musician, search for TITLE <CONTAINS> Musi. To retrieve CFML and HTML pages whose meta tags contain Framingham as a content word, search for KEYWORD <CONTAINS> Framingham*.
MATCHES	Selects documents by matching the query string with values stored in a specific document field. Documents are selected only if the search elements specified match the field value exactly. If a partial match is found, a document is not selected. When you use the MATCHES operator, you specify the field name to search, and the word, phrase, or number to locate. You can use ? and * to represent individual and multiple characters, respectively, within a string.	See the text immediately after this table for examples.
STARTS	Selects documents by matching the character string that you specify with the starting characters of the values stored in a specific document field.	In a document field named REPORTER, to retrieve documents written by Clark, Clarks, and Clarkson, search for REPORTER <STARTS> Clark.
ENDS	Selects documents by matching the character string that you specify with the ending characters of the values stored in a specific document field.	In a document field named OFFICER, to retrieve arrest reports written by Tanner, Garner, and Milner, search for OFFICER <ENDS> ner.
SUBSTRING	Selects documents by matching the query string that you specify with any portion of the strings in a specific document field.	In a document field named TITLE, to retrieve documents whose titles contain words such as solution, resolution, solve, and resolve, search for TITLE <SUBSTRING> sol.

For example, assume a document field named SOURCE includes the following values:

Computer
Computerworld
Computer Currents
PC Computing

To locate documents whose source is Computer, enter the following:

SOURCE <MATCHES> computer

To locate documents whose source is Computer, Computerworld, and Computer Currents, enter the following:

SOURCE <MATCHES> computer*

To locate documents whose source is Computer, Computerworld, Computer Currents, and PC Computing, enter the following:

SOURCE <MATCHES> *comput*

For an example of ColdFusion code that uses the CONTAINS relational operator, see Field searches.

You can use the SUBSTRING operator to match a character string with data stored in a specified data source. In the example described in this section, a data source called TEST1 contains the table YearPlaceText, which contains three columns: Year, Place, and Text. Year and Place make up the primary key. The following table shows the TEST1 schema:

Year	Place	Text
1990	Utah	Text about Utah 1990
1990	Oregon	Text about Oregon 1990
1991	Utah	Text about Utah 1991
1991	Oregon	Text about Oregon 1991
1992	Utah	Text about Utah 1992

The following application page matches records that have 1990 in the TEXT column and are in the Place Utah. The search operates on the collection that contains the TEXT column and then narrows further by searching for the string "Utah" in the CF_TITLE document field. Document fields are defaults defined in every collection corresponding to the values that you define for URL, TITLE, and KEY in the cfindex tag.

<cfquery name="GetText"
   datasource="TEST1">
   SELECT Year+Place AS Identifier, text
      FROM YearPlaceText
</cfquery>

<cfindex collection="testcollection"
   action="Update"
   type="Custom"
   title="Identifier"
   key="Identifier"
   body="TEXT"
   query="GetText">

<cfsearch name="GetText_Search"
   collection="testcollection"
   type="Explicit"
   criteria="1990 and CF_TITLE <SUBSTRING> Utah">
<cfoutput>
   Record Counts: <br>
   #GetText.RecordCount# <br>
   #GetText_Search.RecordCount# <br>
</cfoutput>

Query Results --- Should be 5 rows <br>
<cfoutput query="Gettext">
   #Identifier# <br>
</cfoutput>

Search Results -- should be 1 row <br>
<cfoutput query="GetText_Search">
   #GetText_Search.TITLE# <br>
</cfoutput>

Evidence operators

Evidence operators let you specify a basic word search or an intelligent word search. A basic word search finds documents that contain only the word or words specified in the query. An intelligent word search expands the query terms to create an expanded word list so that the search returns documents that contain variations of the query terms.

Documents retrieved using evidence operators are not ranked by relevance unless you use the MANY modifier.

The following table describes the evidence operators:

Operator	Description	Example
STEM	Expands the search to include the word that you enter and its variations. The STEM operator is automatically implied in any simple query.	<STEM>believe retrieves matches such as "believe," "believing," and "believer".
WILDCARD	Matches wildcard characters included in search strings. Certain characters automatically indicate a wildcard specification, such as apostrophe (*) and question mark(?).	spam* retrieves matches such as, spam, spammer, and spamming.
WORD	Performs a basic word search, selecting documents that include one or more instances of the specific word that you enter. The WORD operator is automatically implied in any SIMPLE query.	<WORD> logic retrieves logic, but not variations such as logical and logician.
THESAURUS	Expands the search to include the word that you enter and its synonyms. Collections do not have a thesaurus by default; to use this feature you must build one.	<THESAURUS> altitude retrieves documents containing synonyms of the word altitude, such as height or elevation.
SOUNDEX	Expands the search to include the word that you enter and one or more words that "sound like," or whose letter pattern is similar to, the word specified. Collections do not have sound-alike indexes by default; to use this feature you must build sound-alike indexes.	<SOUNDEX> sale retrieves words such as sale, sell, seal, shell, soul, and scale.
TYPO/N	Expands the search to include the word that you enter plus words that are similar to the query term. This operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify similar words. The optional N variable in the operator name expresses the maximum number of errors between the query term and a matched term, a value called the error distance. If N is not specified, the default error distance is 2.	<TYPO> swept retrieves kept.

The following example uses an evidence operator:

<cfsearch name = "quick_search"
   collection="bbb" 
   type = "explicit"
   criteria="<WORD>film">

Proximity operators

Proximity operators specify the relative location of specific words in the document. To retrieve a document, the specified words must be in the same phrase, paragraph, or sentence. In the case of NEAR and NEAR/N operators, retrieved documents are ranked by relevance based on the proximity of the specified words. Proximity operators can be nested; phrases or words can appear within SENTENCE or PARAGRAPH operators, and SENTENCE operators can appear within PARAGRAPH operators.

The following table describes the proximity operators:

Operator	Description	Example
NEAR	Selects documents containing specified search terms. The closer the search terms are to one another within a document, the higher the document's score. The document with the smallest possible region containing all search terms always receives the highest score. Documents whose search terms are not within 1000 words of each other are not selected.	war <NEAR> peace retrieves documents that contain stemmed variations of these words within close proximity to each other (as defined by Verity). To control search proximity, use NEAR/N.
NEAR/N	Selects documents containing two or more search terms within N number of words of each other, where N is an integer between 1 and 1024. NEAR/1 searches for two words that are next to each other. The closer the search terms are within a document, the higher the document's score. You can specify multiple search terms using multiple instances of NEAR/N as long as the value of N is the same.	commute <NEAR/10> bicycle <NEAR/10> train <NEAR/10> retrieves documents that contain stemmed variations of these words within 10 words of each other.
PARAGRAPH	Selects documents that include all of the words you specify within the same paragraph. To search for three or more words or phrases in a paragraph, you must use the PARAGRAPH operator between each word or phrase.	<PARAGRAPH> (mission, goal, statement) retrieves documents that contain these terms within a paragraph.
PHRASE	Selects documents that include a phrase you specify. A phrase is a grouping of two or more words that occur in a specific order.	<PHRASE> (mission, oak) returns documents that contain the phrase mission oak.
SENTENCE	Selects documents that include all of the words you specify within the same sentence.	<SENTENCE> (jazz, musician) returns documents that contain these words in the same sentence.
IN	Selects documents that contain specified values in one or more document zones. A document zone represents a region of a document, such as the document's summary, date, or body text. To search for a term only within the one or more zones that have certain conditions, you qualify the IN operator with the WHEN operator.	Chang <IN> author searches document zones named author for the word Chang.

The following example uses a proximity operator:

<cfsearch name = "quick_search"
   collection="bbb" 
   type = "explicit"
   criteria="red<near>socks">

For an example using the IN proximity operator to search XML documents , see Zone searches.

Score operators

Score operators control how the search engine calculates scores for retrieved documents. The maximum score that a returned search element can have is 1.000. You can set the score to display a maximum of four decimal places.

When you use a score operator, the search engine first calculates a separate score for each search element found in a document, and then performs a mathematical operation on the individual element scores to arrive at the final score for each document.

The document's score is available as a result column. You can use the SCORE result column to get the relevancy score of any document retrieved; for example:

<cfoutput>
   <a href="#Search1.URL#">#Search1.Title#</a><br>
   Document Score=#Search1.SCORE#<BR>
</cfoutput>

The following table describes the score operators: