Using the Search Engine

All of the ITG web sites use the SWISH-E search engine. If you have read the SWISH-E 2.2 Documentation and already know how to use SWISH-E, you can make use of the full power of boolean and meta searches (as long as the search type of boolean is selected). If you do not know how to use SWISH-E, these tips will help you use our interface.

Basic Searching

The basic searching option uses only a single text box to enter a query to the search engine. The Advanced Search option has a larger set of features available to it, and is described in greater detail below. Not all ITG web sites have a basic searching option.

To use the basic searching option, simply enter text into the text field and press the enter or return key. The search engine will return a listing of all documents containing all of the search terms. Searching is done in a case-insensitive manner.

The basic searching option understands standard SWISH-E boolean queries, so more complex searches can be constructed using this small text field. To have greater control over searching and the resulting output, it is recommended that the Advanced Search form be used.

Note: if boolean searching is used, do not use the single-quote character in the search field to surround phrases. This will produce incorrect results in the matching output, and will incorrectly fill out the form when redisplayed. Always use double quote characters when boolean searching for phrases.

Advanced Searching

Type words into the search field and press enter or click on the search button. Searching is done in a case-insensitive manner.

There are ways to refine the search using just the words of interest:

All of the Words

Searches for all documents containing every word listed, though not necessarily adjacent to one another. For phrase searching, use the Exact Phrase option.

Some of the Words

Searches for all documents containing at least one of the words listed.

Without the Words

Searches for all documents containing none of the words listed.

Exact Phrase

Searches for the phrase you entered. No quotes are needed.

Boolean

Enables boolean type searches, and all the power of the SWISH-E search engine. See the SWISH-E 2.2 Documentation for more information.

Additional Options

Website

To search across multiple ITG web sites, select the sites of interest from the list. If no web sites are selected, the search engine will default to searching the current web site.

Multiple web site searching is useful for finding references to our projects in papers or other materials that may not be present elsewhere.

Chickscope and Bugscope users: The search engine does not search the project/session databases! You must use the database interface to search for information about the various sessions.

Display

Sets the number of documents to display per page. Be careful with the "All" option: searching for a common word will result in hundreds or thousands of matches!

Format

The format option controls the appearance of the output. By default, the title (or URL) of the matching document is listed first, followed by a short selection of data from the body of the matching document. The last two lines include the rank (liklihood of a good match), the document's size, and the URL for the document.

If using a slow network connection, searching without document descriptions may help display the matches faster.

The Results Section

If no matches are found, a message will be displayed. Otherwise the matches are returned in rank order, with the highest matching documents listed first.

If more than one page of matches has been found, a series of links at the bottom of the page will let you step page by page through the matches.