DSXchange

Hi All,
I think this discussion forum is going to have many messages. I think if we can have the search capability for key words. That would be a great help in finding a topic or missage.

DSGuru.

There actually is a handy search tool, it's just easy to overlook. Underneath the Tools4DataStage heading on the top right there is a group of hyperlinks. In between Members and FAQ is Search, and this function lets you search for exact key word matches, any word matches, limit the search to a date range, and limit searches to a particular folder

I cannot get any of the "Search for all terms" searches to return any data. Can anyone give me a clue what I'm doing wrong? I searched for "DataStage Job" (without the quotes) and "run job" (again without quotes) and both queries returned no results.

I appreciate your help.
Tony

This is one unfortunate side-effect of the search function built into this bulletin board. When a given word such as "DataStage" is used, phpBB keeps a running count on the total number of posts using that word.

As a word is used more and more, eventually it hits a critical mass of commonality and the word is no longer indexed for full-text searching. The point is to save space in the database (especially on REALLY large boards) and on a board devoted to, say...dinosaurs...searching the word "dinosaur" would return a ridiculous number of results compared to the relatively uncommon word "polacanthus".

It also has the undesirable effect of killing searches when common words happen to be important to the search string.

Go ahead, try searching for "DataStage" using the all search query type, and I guarantee this post will not show up. The any query type won't register anything either, unless you included other uncommon words in the search string. Searching for all of the words "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" on the other hand pulls this post up instantly. It's all in the commonality of the words in the search string.

*Note that the exact match search type is a bit different and was custom-added to help get around this problem.

Bottom line, using very common words in an "any" search is useless and does nothing, but using very common words in an "all" search is downright fatal to the function.

When using the all search type, it is best to start with one or two very uncommon words, narrowing down the results with more uncommon words or broadening the results by using fewer words.

However, if you MUST search for a word or phrase that is common enough to be ignored by the search engine, use the exact match search function to find it.


Hope this helps,

The DSXchange Team