Search MIRS Capitol Capsule

Query Language

This list gives the rules for formulating queries:

• Multiple consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a matching document.
• Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in uppercase or lowercase.
• You can search for any word except for those in the exception list (for English, this includes a, an, and, as, and other common words), which are ignored during a search.
• Words in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for “Crime and Punishment”, the results could give you “Crime or Punishment” and “Crime and Punishment”, because or is a noise word and appears in the exception list.
• Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored during a search.
• To use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (“).
• To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose the entire phrase in quotation marks and then double the quotation marks around the word or words you want to surround with quotes. For example, “World-Wide Web or ““Web””” searches for World-Wide Web or “Web”.
• You can use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, and NOT) and the Proximity Operator (NEAR) to specify additional search information.
• The Wildcard Character (*) can match words with a given prefix. The query esc* matches the terms “ESC,” “escape,” and so on.

Boolean and Proximity Operators

Boolean and proximity operators can create a more precise query.

Wildcards

Wildcard operators help you find pages containing words similar to a given word.

Free Text Queries

Use Free Text Queries if you want to enter queries using natural language. Index Server will examine your query, extract nouns and noun phrases and construct a query for you. With free text queries you can enter any text you want, from a proper question, to a string of words and phrases, without worrying about the query language. For example, if you type in the following query:

"Any House Bill concerning water rights"

Index Server will create a query for you automatically and begin the search. Note that when you're using free text queries, the regular query language features are disabled and keywords such as AND, OR, and NEAR are interpreted as normal words.