5.0

Table Of Contents
Types of Searches
177
Simple Word Syntax
You perform a simple word search whenever you search for a simple string of characters in a
story, queue, or directory, depending on where your cursor is located in the iNEWS workspace.
Basic searches are not case sensitive.
For example, enter
snow
to find stories containing the word "snow."
Seek Queries
To perform Seek queries, use the Find All (Ctrl+Shift+F) command. This command can be used
by any iNEWS user with any level of user privileges. Seek queries are performed by the Seek
server and are done on what are called non-indexed queues. You provide your search criteria and
the program carries out your search request in the background, which means you can perform
other work while this search program operates. The Seek server scans the regular iNEWS
database, story by story.
Seek queries are generally slower than Indexed queries and do not support pattern-matching.
Indexed Queries
If your site has a Fast Text Search (FTS) server, you can execute indexed queries, which are fast,
efficient background searches through large quantities of text. If you invoke a background search
(Find All - Ctrl+Shift+F and Find Global - Ctrl+Shift+G) for material in a folder or queue
marked with the Indexed icon, iNEWS will send your search request to the FTS server. The FTS
server looks up words you specified in the index and return a list of resulting stories to iNEWS.
In contrast to Seek queries, the list of operators is extensive, and they can be combined as well as
nested within others. In these searches any white space between words equals the operator OR,
and you can also use abbreviated operators (& | !). For more information on abbreviated
operators, see
“Phrase Searches” on page 178.
Unlike a Seek query, an Index query supports pattern-matching.
An Indexed query acts like an index in a book. The Indexed search stores references to where
information you seek is stored. For instance, if you search for the word "Bush," the FTS server
will note the word appears in stories 1, 8, 12, and 16. If you look for the word "Cheney," the
Indexed query finds the word in stories 2, 8, and 12. If you look for stories containing "Bush &
Cheney," you can look at stories that appear in both lists, such as stories 8 and 12 in this example.
Not all queues can be searched with the Indexed query, because it takes space and effort to
maintain an index. Your system administrator might decide to index only those queues searched
often.