The Search Engine

Topics

• Tips on Using the Search Engine
• Finding a Word on a Page
• Entering a Search Query
• Special Considerations

Tips on Using the Search Engine

The search engine allows you to search for pages in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and the developerWorks®: Rational® Web site in a number of ways. For example, you can:

• Search for pages that contain all of the words that you have typed.
• Search for pages that contain any of the words that you have typed.
• Search for pages that contain the exact phrase that you have typed.
• Search for pages that contain none of the words that you have typed.

To enter a search query, type the words to be searched for in your choice of the All the words, Any word, Exact phrase, and Without the words fields, and then press ENTER or click the Search Now button. When the search is complete, each matching page will be listed in the Results field, showing the page title and a short summary of the content. Click a title to open the page in your RUP Web browser window. If you have performed a developerWorks® search, the results appear in a separate developerWorks: Rational Web browser window.

For example, to search for pages that contain all of the words "Rational", "Unified", and "Process", and either or both of the words "adopt" and "vision", type the words Rational Unified Process in the All the words field, and adopt vision in the Any word field.

You can select how many results per page that you want by using the Show list. If the results are more than what you selected to see per page, click the next and previous buttons to page through the results.

You can also indicate whether you want the query to be applied against RUP or developerWorks. To choose between RUP and developerWorks, click the In section list, and then select the desired section.

Finding a Word on a Page

Once a page is displayed by the search engine, use the Web browser's search tool to find a specific word on that page. Press CTRL+F to start the Web browser's search tool.

Entering a Search Query

A search query consists of one or more specified words. Boolean operators cannot be used. Instead of Boolean operators, use the All the words, Any word, Exact phrase, or Without the word fields that are provided. The search process is not case-sensitive, which means that Hello, HELLO, and hElLo are all considered the same. The wildcard symbol * is not supported.

When more than one field is used, the query is evaluated with precedence from top to bottom. For example, the query:

is evaluated as (project AND management) AND (adopt OR vision) AND (Rational Unified Process) NOT (implementation). In other words, the matching pages must contain both of the words "project" and "management", the word "adopt" or "vision", along with the phrase "Rational Unified Process". Matching pages must not contain the word "implementation".

Special Considerations

• The search engine automatically excludes common words such as "where", "when", and "the" from search queries, because these words are excluded during the creation of the index files on which the search operates. Excluding these words improves performance of the search without impacting the precision of the results.
• In order for a query using the Without the words field to make sense, there must be text in at least one of the other search fields. In other words, unless you first specify that you want the search to find pages that do contain certain words or a specific phrase, the search engine cannot find pages that do not contain certain words.
• Wildcard searches using the wildcard character * are not supported.
• Boolean operators are not supported. See the section titled Entering a Search Query for instructions on how to perform searches that are equivalent to using Boolean operators.
• You may obtain unsatisfactory search results for queries that attempt to search for single digit numbers in their numeric format, especially the numbers 0 though 9. Instead of searching for the numeric value, either omit the number from the search or use the full textual spelling of the number, for example "zero", "six", "nine", "ten" and so forth.

Rational Unified Process