All terms are case-insensitive. You may, if you wish, use capitalization for proper names in a query, but DEVONsphere Express will ignore case in interpreting the query.
Precedence of terms
Search terms and associated operators will be interpreted from left to right, except as modified by including portions of the query within parentheses.
Boolean operators
The operators (often called Boolean operators) are words or symbols that establish logical rules for the terms in the search query. These are:
term1 AND term2: Contains term1 AND term2
term1 BUT term2: Contains term1 AND term2
term1 OR term2: Contains term1 OR term2
term1 XOR term2: Contains term1 or term2, but not both
term1 EOR term2: Contains term1 or term2, but not both
NOT term: Does not contain term
"term1": Contains the string term1, in exactly this form; uses fuzzy matching (e.g., "DEVON tech" matches also "DEVON-tech" or "DEVON++++tech"); accepts also the '*' operator, like 'BEFORE' but more precise.
Beside the classic Boolean operators, DEVONsphere Express features a number of operators that can usually only be found on high-end databases. Use them as a replacement for AND and "quotes" to fine-tune your query.
term1 NEAR term2: term1 occurs 10 words or less before or after term2
term1 NEAR/n term2: term1 occurs n or less words before or after term2
term1 BEFORE term2: term1 occurs before term2
term1 BEFORE/n term2: term1 occurs n or less words before term2
term1 NEXT term2: term1 occurs right before term2 (shortcut for BEFORE/1)
term1 NEXT/n term2: term 1 occurs n or less words before term2 (synonym for BEFORE/n)
term1 AFTER term2: term1 occurs after term2
term1 AFTER/n term2: term1 occurs n or less words after term2
term1 OPT term2: term1 is mandatory but term2 is optional. If term2 is also found the result is ranked higher.
~term1: Contains all words that begin or end with term1 (words containing term1 as a part of the word; depends on the queried search engine)
For convenience, some of these operators can also be abbreviated using commonly used symbols:
AND: &, &&, +
OR: |, ||
XOR: ^, ^^
NOT: !, -
Wildcards
You can replace parts of words with wildcards matching one, multiple, or a range of characters:
?: Matches exactly one character.
*: Matches none, one, or multiple characters.
[a-b]: Matches one character of the range 'a' through 'b'.
[abc...] or [a|b|c|...]: Matches one character out of the given list of characters.
[^...]: Matches one character that is not contained in the given list or range.
Special rules
To search for a word that is also the name of an operator, put the word inside quotation marks. The following example searches all four terms including the word "near":
