Full-Text Search Specialty Data Store User's Guide

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Chapter 2: Understanding the Full-Text Search Engine

Full-Text Search Specialty Data Store User's Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction

What Is the Full-Text Search Specialty Data Store?

Full-Text Search Specialty Data Store (referred to in this book as the Full-Text Search engine) is an Open Server(TM) application built on Verity Search '97. Adaptive Server connects to the Full-Text Search engine through Component Integration Services (CIS), allowing queries written in the Verity query language to perform full-text searches on Adaptive Server data.

There are two versions of the Full-Text Search Specialty Data Store:

The Standard version is included with your purchase of Adaptive Server Enterprise
The Enhanced version is purchased separately and has additional capabilities

This book describes the features and functionality of both versions. For more information about the Verity product and the Verity operators used to perform full-text searches, see the Verity Web site:

http://www.verity.com

Capabilities of the Full-Text Search Engine

The Full-Text Search Specialty Data Store product performs powerful, full-text searches on Adaptive Server data. In Adaptive Server, without the Full-Text Search engine, you can search text columns only for data that matches what you specify in a select statement. For example, if a table contains documents about dog breeds, and you perform a search on the words "Saint Bernard," the query produces only the rows that include "Saint Bernard" in the text column.

With the Full-Text Search engine, you can expand queries on text columns to do the following:

Rank the results by order of how often a searched item appears in the selected document. For example, you can obtain a list of document titles that reference the words "Saint Bernard" five or more times.
Select documents in which the words you search for appear within n number of words of each other. For example, you can search only for the documents that include the words "Saint Bernard" and "Swiss Alps" and that appear within 10 words of each other.
Select documents that include all the search elements you specify within a single paragraph or sentence. For example, you can query the documents that include the words "Saint Bernard" in the same paragraph or sentence as the words "Swiss Alps."
Select documents that contain one or more synonyms of the word you specify. For example, you can select documents that discuss "dogs," and it returns documents that contain the words "dogs," "canine," "pooch," "pup," and so on.

Capabilities of the Enhanced Full-Text Search Engine

In addition to the Full-Text Search engine capabilities described above, the Enhanced Full-Text Search engine provides additional functionality that allows you to refine your search. Using Enhanced Full-Text Search engine, you can:

Create your own custom thesaurus. For example, you can create a custom thesaurus that includes "working dogs," "St. Bernard," "large dogs," and "European Breeds" as synonyms for "Saint Bernard."
Create topics that specify the search criteria for a query. For example, you can create a topic that returns documents that include the phrase "Saint Bernard" or "St. Bernard," followed by documents that include the phrase "working dogs," "large dogs," or "European Breeds."
Return documents grouped in clusters to give you a sense of the major topics covered in the documents.
Select a section of relevant text in a document and search for other, similar documents.
Index many different document types, such as Microsoft Word, FrameMaker, and so on. The Standard Full-Text Search engine allows you to index only SGML and HTML documents.
Sort documents using up to 16 sort orders. The Standard Full-Text Search engine allows only a single sort order.

Enhanced Full-Text Search engine also provides additional system administration features such as:

Integrated backup and restore capabilities
Ability to change the value of a configuration parameter using a system procedure
Ability to optimize indexes for text searches when your server is inactive, to enhance performance
Additional system management reports for viewing setup information
Ability to bring databases online automatically for text searches


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