Definitions

In order to make the best use of the Search function, here are a few definitions as how the Portal considers your queries:

Text

A Text is a sequence of one or more Items, separated by a space. Example:

"a collection of words" +single_word -another_single_word one_last_word

Item

An Item is a group consisting of an (optional) sign in front of a Term. Example:

+single_word   or  -"first_word second_word"

Term

A Term is a single word, or a  collection of words within opening and closing double quotes. The quotes are telling the system that the space between the words is not to be interpreted as a separator -  ore more simply, that the text string between the quotes is the entity for which you are searching a match. Example:

"first_word second_word third_word"

Searching for Text

If an unsigned term matches a keyword with a Damerau-Levenstein distance of at the most 2, the application considers this term as a match (effectively, the search algorithm allows the user up to 2 spelling mistakes) and, depending on the result of the matching process of signed terms, the document will be added to the search result.

Refining the Search

Additional features allow you refine your search:

• the "+" sign right in front of the term: the related term must match a keyword in exactly the same spelling, except letter casing
• the "-" sign: if a keyword exists that matches the related term then the whole document is removed from the set of matching documents