# Search Tips: BEA Documentation Server

This topic includes tips for searching WebLogic Workshop Help when you are using the BEA Search Engine to search the documentation set that is on the BEA documentation server.

## Search Engines in WebLogic Workshop Help

By default, WebLogic Workshop displays help content from the public BEA documentation server available at e-docs.bea.com. The help that is available on the e-docs server is always the most up-to-date. The e-docs server uses the BEA Search Engine, which is based on the Google search engine, for searching Workshop Help and documentation for other BEA products as well. The search tips outlined in this topic apply only to searches made against the BEA documentation server.

A local version of the help is also installed on your machine. If you prefer to use the local documentation set instead of the online help content from e-docs.bea.com, you can set an option to specify that WebLogic Workshop displays the local help content. In the Workshop IDE, choose Tools -> IDE Properties, select the Help tab, and set the WebLogic Workshop Help Location option to "Local Disk." Regular updates are available on e-docs.bea.com so that you can download the latest help content to your computer.

## The Basic Search

To enter a query, type in a few descriptive words and press the Enter key or click the Search button for a list of relevant results.

The BEA Search Engine uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, it analyzes not only the candidate page, but also the pages linking into it to determine the value of the candidate page for your search. The BEA Search Engine also prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other.

## Automatic AND Queries

By default, the BEA Search Engine only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include AND between terms. To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms.

## OR Queries

The BEA Search Engine supports the logical OR operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase OR between terms.

## Does Capitalization Matter?

Searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are understood as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington," "George Washington," and "George washington" all return the same results.

## Does The BEA Search Engine Observe Stop Words?

The BEA Search Engine ignores common words and characters known as stop words. These include most pronouns and articles. It automatically disregards such terms as "where" and "how," as well as certain single digits and single letters. These terms rarely help to narrow a search and can significantly slow searching. If you want to use stop words in your search, use the "+" sign or enclose your phrase containing stop words in quotation marks. Make sure that you include a space before the "+" sign.

## Does The BEA Search Engine Use Stemming?

To provide the most accurate results, the BEA Search Engine does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. Rather, it searches for exactly the words that you enter into the search box.

For example, searching for "airlin" or "airlin*" will not yield "airline" or "airlines.". If in doubt, try both forms, for example: "airline" and "airlines."

## Refining Your Search

Since the BEA Search Engine only returns topics that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined query returns a specific subset of the pages that were returned by your original broad query.

## Excluding Words

You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.

## Phrase Searches

You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for famous sayings or specific names.

Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. The Search Engine recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors.

## Advanced Operators

The BEA Search Engine supports several advanced operators, which are query words with special functions. Explanations of some of the most useful advanced operators are provided below. Others are available in the BEA Search Engine Search Tips document.

Note that when you use these operators in a query, you should omit the square brackets, which have been used here for readability.

allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], the results are restricted to documents with all of the query words in the document's HTML title. For example, [allintitle: bea search] only returns documents that have both "bea" and "search" in the HTML title.

intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the search is restricted to results with documents containing that word in the HTML title. For example, [intitle:bea search] returns documents that mention the word "bea" in their HTML title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document either in the title or anywhere else in the document.

Note: There can be no space between [intitle:] and the following word.

Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query. For example, [intitle:bea intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: bea search].

allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], the search is restricted to results with all of the query words in the URL. For example, [allinurl: bea search] returns only documents that have both "bea" and "search" in the URL.

Note: [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] restricts the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the URL, but doesn't require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, the results are restricted to documents containing that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:bea search] returns documents that mention the word "bea" in their URL and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document either in the URL or anywhere else in the document.

Note: There can be no space between [inurl:] and the following word.

Note: [inurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, in the query [bea inurl:foo/bar], the inurl: operator affects only the word "foo," which is the single word following the inurl: operator, and does not affect the word "bar." The query [bea inurl:foo inurl:bar] can be used to require both "foo" and "bar" to be in the URL.

Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:] at the front of your query. For example, [inurl:bea inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: bea search].

Related Topics

BEA Search Engine Search Tips