When supporting Documentum, we often got complaining from users like “The search is not working” or “I cannot find my document”.
The first reflex is to verify if the xPlore is working properly. The second reflex is to perform a search test but all is working correctly.
Then we contact user to get more details about his search.
Sometimes the only problem is that user does not use the search properly. Indeed the Documentum search use its “own” language with wildcard and the user just don’t use the right syntax.
Here I propose to set a kind of Rosetta stone which make the link between Human and xPlore language.

Ready to “talk” with the Full Text ?
Let’s start !

Search comprehension:

A word: this is a set of alphanumeric characters in between space characters.

A wildcard character: this is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character, such as an asterisk [ * ], takes the place of any other single character or a string or zero charactere.

 

Search with one word and quotation marks [ ” ” ]

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understand Will match Will
NOT
match
“word1” “word1”: Here Fulltext will search for an exact match of terms contained between the quotation marks word1 word
word11
xword1

 

Search with one word

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understands Will match Will
NOT
match
word1 “word1*”
Here FullText add an asterisk [ * ] at the end of the word which matches single character or a string or zero character.
And quotation marks are also automatically added at the beginning and the end of the word.
word1
word1A
word14A
word132
word
wo
rword
1word
word4A

 

Search with one word and wildcard question marks [ ? ]

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understands Will match Will
NOT
match
word1? “word1?”
Here Fulltext will replace the question mark [ ? ] with zero or one single character.
And quotation marks are also automatically added at the beginning and the end of the word.
word1
word11
word12
word1a
word1x
word
word123
xword11

 

Search with one word and wildcard star [ * ]

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understands Will match Will
NOT
match
word1* “word1*”
The asterisk [ * ] matches single character or a string or zero character.
And quotation marks are also automatically added at the beginning and the end of the word.
word1
word12
word12a
word1x2b
word
word1

 

Search with several words

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understands Will match Will
NOT
match
word1 word2 “word1*” OR “word2*”
The [ space ] between two words is translated as “OR“.
The rule “1) search with one word” is applied for each word
word1 OR word2
word1A
word14A
word132
word2
word2A
word24A
word232
xword1 OR xword2

 

Search with several words and quotation marks

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understands Will match Will
NOT
match
“word1 word2” “word1 word2”
Here Fulltext will search for an exact match of terms contained within the quotation mark
word1 word2 word1 OR word2
word1 AND xword2
xword1 AND word2

 

Search with several words and [+] character

When user type
in search field
Dsearch understands Will match Will
NOT
match
word1 + word2 “word1*” AND “word2*”
Here combination of word [ space ][ + ]word is translated as “AND“.
The rule “1) search with one word” is applied for each word
Note: Search can be combined with several [+]
word1 +word2 +word3
word1 AND word2
word1 AND word2x
word1x AND word2
word1x AND word2x
word1
word2
xword1 AND word2
word1 AND xword2

 

These are the basic search “tips” mostly out of the box, be aware these search behaviors can be customized with some parameters modifications.

My advice is “Abuse quotation marks ¨” 😉

I hope this has been helpfull !