Here are some frequently asked questions about searching with NetDB:
- Why doesn't Full Search find all the entries containing my search string?
- Why does my Full Search fail with the error “"field name" field "search string" is not a valid string field.”?
- How do I find all the Nodes associated with a particular person?
- Why doesn't Full Search find all the entries containing my search string?
You probably expected NetDB to search by substring, but NetDB does not implicitly search by substring.
Many search forms search by substring, e.g., a search for "gilbert" would match anything containing that string, like "gilbert and sullivan", "gilbert building", "gilbert grape", or just "gilbert". That's convenient, and NetDB users might expect it, but it's imprecise and precludes uniquely matching entries that are substrings of other entries.
For example, consider a department named "Art", with subdivisions "Classical Art", "Modern Art", "Renaissance Art", etc. With implicit substring search, a search for "art" would match the Art department and all its subdivisions (not to mention the Earth Sciences and Particle Physics departments). But there would be no way to find entries associated with just the Art department and not the other matching departments. That's why Full Search doesn't implicitly search by substring.
Of course Full Search supports searching by substring - it just has to be explicit. To find everything containing the string "art", search for "*art*". [And to find all the entries in the Art department and its subdivisions, but not the Earth Sciences or Particle Physics departments, search for "*art".]
- Why does my Full Search fail with the error “"field name" field "search string" is not a valid string field.”?
The search string contained spaces and it wasn't enclosed in double quotes.
As the Full Search help says, search strings containing spaces must be enclosed in double quotes. But why is that?
Full Search allows you to search for much more than a simple strings. It's a power tool, supporting Boolean "and", "or", and "not" constructs you can use to join multiple strings together to create complex searches. Those strings must be clearly identified in order for "and", "or", and "not" to be interpreted as logical constructs and not part of the search string. For example, without quotes a search for "terman lab and archaeology center" might be for exactly that, or for "terman lab" and "archaeology center". Full Search cannot know the difference without quoted strings, which is why quotes are required for strings containing spaces.
- How do I find all the Nodes associated with a particular person?
To find all the Nodes associated with a person, make a set of Node Full Searches, one for each node-person relationship.
There are four ways a person can be associated with a node:
- User
- Administrator
- NetDB User that created the Node
- NetDB User that last modified the Node
Each of these relationships has a separate pair of "name" and "netid" search fields on the Node Full Search page. Fill in one of the fields with name or NetID of the person in question and submit the search. Repeat for other node-person relationships of interest.
The searches must be separate and only search on a single person field because Full Search conditions are combined with "and". A search with both the user and administrator specified will only find Nodes where that person is both a user and an administrator, but not Nodes where the person is just one or the other.