Looking for a more compact metamorph query syntax

Post Reply
barry.marcus
Posts: 288
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:05 pm

Looking for a more compact metamorph query syntax

Post by barry.marcus »

I'm looking for a more efficient way to phrase some of our lengthier metamorph queries. Here is a *small* example... We often have situations where we have a large number of required words to find near one or more non-required words, but where only one of the required words *has* to be found. In other words, something like this:

MyField like '+ship* @0 online* internet* w/6' or MyField like '+shop* @0 online* internet* w/6' or MyField like '+commerce @0 online* internet* w/6' or ... etc.

This gets cumbersome to construct, and I was hoping to find a more compact syntax along the lines of:

MyField like '(+ship* or +shop* or +commerce or ...) @0 online* internet* w/6'

Another reason we'd like to be able to do this is that our application also translates our texis queries to the syntax required by a third party search engine that we use for the purpose of finding and purchasing additional data for our databases. That engine occasionally balks when the queries are structured in the "non-compact" form described above (albeit translated to the proper syntax) with a lot of structural repetition. The code that does a one-to-one translation from the texis syntax is easy, not to mention already implemented. Building code to recognize where phrases are repeated and combining them into a more compact structure, as well as translating that revised structure, would be much harder.

So far nothing I've tried seems to work right. Is there syntax for this sort of thing? Thanks.
User avatar
John
Site Admin
Posts: 2595
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2000 3:18 pm
Location: Cleveland, OH
Contact:

Looking for a more compact metamorph query syntax

Post by John »

Not with the wildcards. Otherwise it would be the invite thesaurus syntax.

+(ship,shop,commerce) (online,internet) w/6
John Turnbull
Thunderstone Software
barry.marcus
Posts: 288
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:05 pm

Looking for a more compact metamorph query syntax

Post by barry.marcus »

OK, thanks. We will try to work with something like that. But what do you mean by "invite thesaurus"?
User avatar
mark
Site Admin
Posts: 5513
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2000 6:56 pm

Looking for a more compact metamorph query syntax

Post by mark »

I suspect "inline" got auto-corrected to "invite".
Post Reply