Query Syntax

Table of Contents

• Single term
• Phrase
• Prefix
• And
• Or
• Not
• Field selection
• Lexical proximity
• Grouping
• Relations
• Expansion inhibition
• Advanced mode

Single term

transcription
lec2
sigma\(K\)

• Each term is expanded separately.
• Characters that require backslash (\) escaping: ( ) [ ] ~ = and space ( ).
• any other character does not require escaping.

Phrase

"Bacillus subtilis"
"therapeutical treatment"

• Each phrase is expanded as a whole.
• Retrieved documents contain all terms in the phrase one next to another in the specified order

Prefix

Bacill*
pharma*

• Prefixes are not expanded.

And

obesity and diabetes
bacteria AND transcription
obesity diabetes

• Operator is case-insensitive.
• Implicit operator between terms.

Or

inhibition or activation
diabete OR hypertension

Not

regulation not inhibition
diabetes NOT obesity

• Not is a binary operator, left operand is mandatory.

Field selection

title=oral
kind=a1

• The default field depends on the search engine instance.
• Some search engine instances may define alias fields that concatenate other fields.

Lexical proximity

food ~4 bacteria
particle ~5 diameter

• Operands can be single terms, phrases or prefixes.
• Field qualifiers are not allowed in ~N operands.

Grouping

(diabetes not obes*) or (diabetes non-obese)
(inhibition or activation) transcription
(melanoma or cancer or tumor) ~4 human
(kind=A1 or kind=B1) diabet*

• Operator precedence without parentheses: or > and > not > ~N = ~REL

Relations

"produit fini" ~traite maladie
bacteria livesin food
bacteria LivesIn waste
lactobacillus lives in human

• Relation operator is case-insensitive.
• A single space may be inserted in the relation name.
• Use a phrase query to search for documents that contain the name of the relation.

Expansion inhibition

[bacteria]
[human or mouse]

• Expansion is turned off between square brackets.

Advanced mode

• Double quotes inhibit expansion
• Expansion through list of terms (longest wins)