- Introduction to Search
- How to Do a Simple Search
- Type one or more words into the field under Search for:
- Click on the button below "Type of Match Required" if you want to change the type of word match you want. When the menu opens, click on the type of match you want. For a detailed explanation of the types of matches see the Type of Match Required section.
- Click on the Search This View button to start the search.
- How to Do an Advanced Search
- Type one or more words into the fields under Search for:
- If you put a word in more than one field, click on the and buttons between the entry fields to select the type of search from the list that appears.
- Select the maximum number of matches you want to see on a page by clicking on the 10 items per results page button and selecting from the list that appears.
- If more than one document or document collection is shown, select the volumes you want to search. If you want to search all indexed documents, click the Select All button. If you only want to search part of the library, use the checkboxes next to the document names to select and deselect the documents you want to search. A checkmark means that document will be included in the search, an empty checkbox means it will not be searched. Note: if you have javascript turned off in your browser, you must select the Search Selected radio button so the checkboxes will take effect.
- Not all documents may be searchable, see this Note for an explanation.
- Click on the Search This View button to start the search.
- 'Search function is not available' message
- The most common reason is that the search engine has not been installed on the documentation server. For instructions on how to install the search engine, see the Documentation Library Service section of the operating system's Installation Guide.
- Another, less common, reason is that the search service is not turned ON. For instructions on how to activate the search engine, see the Problem Determination section in the Documentation Library Service chapter inside the System Management Guide: Operating System and Devices.
- The search function may not be available if the language of documentation you are viewing is not supported by the search engine. See the Documentation Library Service section of the operating system's System Management Guide for a list of supported languages.
- The search function may not be available if no indexes were given for the documentation being viewed.
The top area of the Documentation Library page contains the search form. There are two different versions of the search form - Simple and Advanced. By default, the Simple form appears when you first open the library. You can select the Advanced form by pressing the Advanced Search button. The Advanced form adds the following functions: complex boolean searches (and/or/not), changeable number of results hits returned, and selection of specific documents to be searched.
In the Simple search form, you cannot select the specific objects to be searched. You must use the Advanced form if you want to select specific documents to be searched. Not all documents may be searchable, see this Note for an explanation.To conduct a simple search, do the following:
The message "Search function is not available." will appear at the top of the library page if the library's search service can not be contacted. There are several reasons why the search function may not be available.
- Expanding and Contracting the Document Tree
- Opening a Document
Expand a branch of the tree by clicking on the Expand button to the left of the object.Contract a branch of the tree by clicking on the Contract button to the left of an object. This will close all branches of the tree below that object. Note that if only SOME of the objects under that branch are checked for searching, the contracted object will display a partially checked box to indicate that only SOME of the objects under it will be included in searches. You can click the partial checkbox to change it to unchecked and then click it again to make ALL objects under that object searchable.
If an object can be opened for reading it will appear as a link. Simply click on the link and the document or collection of documents will be opened into the browser for reading.
- Search Form Controls
- PHRASE, all words, this order
- ALL these words, any order
- ONE or MORE
of these words, any order
- Only ONE of the words needs to be in a document for it to match your
search. For example, if you type "red boat", any document that just has
"red" in it will match and any document that just contains "boat" will
match. Documents that contain both words will also match.
- The Change Language buttons allow you to search translated versions of documents. To change languages, use the first button to select the language you want. Then click on the Go button on the right. The new search form will appear in the language you chose.
- These buttons only appear if there are translated versions of the documents installed on the documentation server. Likewise, the languages that show up in the first button's menu will vary depending on which translated documents have been installed and registered on your documentation server.
- When you type text into the text entry fields, you must use text characters for the language in which the form is displayed. For example, if the form is displayed in Japanese, you must type Japanese characters into the text entry fields. However, you can always type into the fields English characters from the Portable ASCII codeset since these characters are available as standard characters in all languages.
- If you need to change the character set in which you are typing, you must change your locale (language) and then restart your browser.
- If you switch to another language and the labels on the search form buttons look garbled, you must change your locale (language) and then restart your browser so it will display the buttons properly.
- Results Page Controls
- Navigation Tree Controls
This section describes the various parts of the search forms.To specify the words you want to search for, type one or more words into the text entry fields.Capitalization is ignored, the search is case-insensitive. For example, if you type in Dog it will find documents containing both Dog and dog.
Punctuation marks are ignored.
On the advanced search form if more than one word is entered into one field, a phrase search is performed. Phrase search means that all the words in the field must be in the document, next to each other, and in the order they appear in the search field.
Some words may be ignored and not searched for when you enter them in the text entry fields. For example, very short words, such as single character words, and very common words, such as "the", may be ignored. This depends upon the language you are using and how your system administrator has configured the search program.
When you type text into the text entry fields, you must use text characters for the language in which the form is displayed. For example, if the form is displayed in Japanese, you must type Japanese characters into the text entry fields. However, you can always type into the fields English characters from the Portable ASCII codeset since these characters are available as standard characters in all languages.
If you need to change the character set in which you are typing, you must change your locale (language) and then restart your browser.
This drop-down menu lets you select the type of word match that is required before a document is returned as matching your search words. The choices are:
Phrase search means that all the words must appear together just as typed. All the words in the field must be in the document, next to each other, and in the order they appear in the search field. For example, if you type "red boat" in the search field, a document containing this sentence will match: "The red boat sank in the ocean". But a document containing this sentence will not match: "The boat had a red flag".
All of the words in the search field must be in the document. They can be in any order in the document and do no have to be next to each other. For example if you type in the words "red boat", any document that contains both the words red and boat will match. It will match even if the words are in reverse order (boat red) or if they are not even in the same sentence.
This button starts the search process. If you start a search and want to cancel the search before it is completed, use your browser's cancel download function.
Press this button to change to using the Advanced Search form. The Advanced form adds the following functions: complex boolean searches (and/or/not), changeable number of results hits returned, and selection of specific documents to be searched (Simple search searches ALL indexed documents).Press this button to move to the Simple search form. The simple search form searches ALL indexed documents in the library. If you need to select only some of the documents in the library, use the Advanced form.These two buttons allow you to select the kind of search you want to do.
and - means that both of the words on each side of the and must be in the document
For example, if you entered dog in the first field and cat in the second field and leave the button between them set to and, then only documents that contain both words will appear in the results page. If a document contains only one of the words, it does not match and will not appear in the results list.
or - means that if either one of the words is in the document, it is a match
For example, if you enter dog or cat, then any document that contains either one of the words will appear in the results list. If the document contains both of the words, it will also match and appear in the results list.
not - means that if the word in the field to the right is in a document, do not display the document
For example, if you enter dog not cat, the results list will only show documents that contain the word dog but do not contain the word cat. If a document contains both words, it will not match and will not appear in the results list.
This button allows you to select the maximum number of matches that you want to see on each results page. If there are more matches than the number you selected, the matches will appear on the next results page. You view the next page by pressing the Next Page button at the bottom of the results page.
If you press the Select All button, all of the volumes will be selected for search. If you press Deselect All, all of the currently selected volumes will be deselected. When the search form first appears, the default is that all volumes are selected for search. If there are a lot of volumes and you only want to search a few of them, press Deselect All, and then click on the volumes you want to search.
If you press the Expand button, all of the branches of the navigation tree will be expanded one level. If you press the Collapse button, all of the branches of the navigation tree will be contracted one level.
The Print Tool button launches the print tool. The print tool displays a list of all printable books and allows you to download a book to your printer.
List of matches
Below the search entry fields is the list of the documents that matched the words you entered in the search form. The stars to the left of each document indicate how well the document matched the words you entered in the search form.Each document is listed with the title of document followed by the URL address of the document. Depending on how the volume was created, the first header in the document may also appear after a hyphen to the right of the document title. If you want to read the document, click on the title and the document will appear in the browser window. Alternately, some browsers allow you to place the mouse pointer over the title, click the right mouse button, and select from the popup menu a choice that will open the document in a separate window.
This button will appear at the bottom of the results page. If you click this button the next page of matching documents will appear. Once you are on the second or later results page, a Previous Page button will appear next to the Next Page button. Clicking on the Previous Page button will take you back to the previous results page.
Views Bar
The first area under the Search form is the Views bar. This views-bar allows you to select one of the different library views that are available.
Each view may present different documents and may organize the documents differently.
Click on the view name to see the documents available in the view. The view that you are currently viewing is the only view in the bar that is not a link. The exact names of the views that are available will vary depending on the contents of library you have open.Expand a branch of the tree by clicking on the Expand button to the left of the object.
Contract a branch of the tree by clicking on the Contract button to the left of an object. This will close all branches of the tree below that object. Note that if only SOME of the objects under that branch are checked for searching, the contracted object will display a partially checked box to indicate that only SOME of the objects under it will be included in searches. You can click the partial checkbox to change it to unchecked and then click it again to make ALL objects under that object searchable.
Checkboxes only appear in when the Advanced search form is at the top of the page. Checkboxes indicate that the object can be searched using the search form. If there is no checkbox in front of an object, it will never be included in searches.
Expand Button
Contract Button
More information is available to help administrators install, configure and administer the Documentation Library Service, indexes and documents.
To view this information, go to the Documentation Library Service chapter in the manual System Management Guide: Operating System and Devices.
More information is available to help developers include the Documentation Library Service in their applications so that users can search the application's helps and documentation.
To view this information, go to the Documentation Library Service chapter in the manual General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs.
IndexA search index is a compressed copy of a document or collection of documents. By searching indexes instead of the full length documents, searches can be performed more quickly. When a match in an index is found, the original document from which the index was created is shown as the match. Note that this means that the Documentation Library Service does not search all the documents on your system. It only searches those documents that have indexes. Indexes may be shipped with the documentation for an application, or they can be created using the IMNSearch indexing tools.
For information on registering and indexing documents, see the Library Administrators section.
Documentation Server
This is the computer that contains the documents and has the Documentation Library Service installed and configured. This may be your local computer, or it may be a remote network computer.
The documentation library does not show all documents that are on the library server. It only shows documents that are registered with the library. This allows the library administrator to present a restrict which documents are visible in the library. In addition to registering a document or colleciton of documents, the library administrator should create an Index of the document or colleciton of documents so that they are searchable from within the library.
For information on registering and indexing documents, see the Library Administrators section.
Volume
A volume represents a document or collection of documents that are on your search server.