The search engine supports a wide range of searching options.

Wildcard Searches

To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol. To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol. The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search: te?t Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search: test* You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term. te*t Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy Searches

To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a Single word Term. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search: roam~ This search will find terms like foam and roams

Proximity Searches

Finding words are a within a specific distance away. To do a proximity search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a Phrase. For example to search for a "federal" and "grants" within 10 words of each other in a document use the search: "federal grants"~10

Boosting a Term

The search engine provides the relevance level of matching documents based on the terms found. To boost a term use the caret, "^", symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be. Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for federal grants and you want the term "federal" to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type: federal^4 grants This will make documents with the term federal appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example: "federal grants"^4 "agriculture grant" By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2)

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. We supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators(Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).

OR

The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR. To search for documents that contain either "federal grants" or just "federal" use the query: "federal grants" federal or "federal grants" OR federal

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND. To search for documents that contain "federal grants" and "agriculture grant" use the query: "federal grants" AND "agriculture grant"

+

The "+" or required operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in a the field of a single document. To search for documents that must contain "federal" and may contain "grants" use the query: +federal grants

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT. To search for documents that contain "federal grants" but not "agriculture grant" use the query: "federal grants" NOT "agriculture grant" Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results: NOT "federal grants"

-

The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol. To search for documents that contain "jakarta apache" but not "jakarta lucene" use the query: "federal grants" -"agriculture grant"

The search engine supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

To search for either "federal" or "grants" and "website" use the query:

	(federal OR grants) AND website

This eliminates any confusion and makes sure you that website must exist and either term federal or grants may exist.

Escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

To escape these character use the \ before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2 use the query:

	\(1\+1\)\:2