Searching Objects in a repository

The main application used for searching objects in Content Server Repository is WebTop. This is a WDK based application. Following bullet points cover how the search works:

1). Objects are searched using object properties (meta-data) and content (optional).

2). Search never returns objects for which the logged in user has no access (NONE).

3). Objects becomes searchable using keywords present in its content if Full-Text indexing feature has been used in Documentum System setup. In addition to have Full-Text Index server enabled, the content should be first indexed.

4).There are two type of search functionality provided to WebTop users: Simple and Advanced.

5).By default maximum numbers of results returned by the search query is 1000 but this number can be modified.

6). If a repository is configured for Full-Text indexing, search is not case sensitive. For example: searching for ‘engineering’ and ‘Engineering’ would result in the same search result set. But in case of non-indexed repository, the search would be case sensitive but this behavior can be changed by system admin.

7). The Full-Text engine can be configured to include search terms variation in the result.

8). Simple Search is a single-field search that matches the search criteria against selected object properties and indexed contents (in case of Indexed Rep). System admin can configure which properties/meta-data field can be used for a simple search. By default the search is executed against following attributes: Subject, Title and Object_Name

A phrase can be specified by enclosing it in the double quotation mark. For example: “Manufacturing electronics”.

9). Use of operators while searching for objects in Documentum repository:

‘AND’/’and’ operator: Example - John AND Letter

‘OR’/’or’ operator: Example - John OR Letter

‘NOT’/’not’ operator: Example- John NOT Letter / John AND NOT Letter / John OR NOT Letter

‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operators together: Example – Smith AND Kevin OR John

Use of the above operators is not case sensitive.

10). Use of parentheses while searching for objects in Documentum repository:

The search terms that must be processed together are enclosed in the parentheses (). For example: Smith AND ( Letter OR Report ) The important thing to be noted here is the use of blank space before and after “(“ and “)”

11). Use of wild cards while searching objects in Documentum repository:

The two special characters “*” and “?” are used as wild cards while executing a search using WebTop. For example:

(a). Search term d*ment would return all those documents that contain the word document, detachment, deployment etc.

(b).Search term t?n would return all those documents that contain the word then, them, than etc.

12). There are various symbols that cannot be indexed and searched:

( )  +  =  <  > !  @  #  $  %  &  ; :  ^ _  ,  .

While indexing the content if Full-Text Index Engine finds any of aforementioned characters, it treats them as blank. For example: DCL (Documentum Client Library) would be indexed and stored as DCL Documentum Client Library