Boolean Rules and Parameters

Boolean Rules and Parameters

Boolean Search Support in Monitors & the Result Console

Some DigitalStakeout Monitors support a Boolean search option. By selecting this option, you can create a complex query to search a data source. While this is a powerful way to build custom searches it is not without potential pitfalls. Care should be taken to avoid including vague search terms as the safety mechanisms normally included in the basic search construction method will not be enabled.

Note When you select a Boolean option will override ALL parameters in a Monitor.

Note: All Operators are evaluated in a case-insensitive manner, i.e.: dog will match on DOG, dog and Dog.
 

Positive and Negative Operators

Understanding positive and negative operators is the first step in creating a Boolean rule search.  Any word or phrase to be included in the results is a positive operator.  Any word or phrase to be excluded in the results is a negative operator.  

Using the word party or birthday party in your power rule search will include them in search results.  The word or phrase in this example is a positive operator.  

Using the word -party or -birthday in your Boolean rule search will exclude them in search results.  Any word or phrase with a minus (-) symbol in front, as in this example, is a negative operator.

A single Boolean rule search can support up to 30 positive operators, and up to 50 negative operators subject to the restrictions documented henceforth.

General Search, AND-ing Terms, OR-ing Terms, Negating Terms, Grouping and Exact Match

General Search

Single word entry would match activities with that single word in the text body. For example, the following Boolean Search rule would match activities with ‘happy’ in the text body. 

  • happy

 

ANDing terms with a white space

Adding another keyword is the same as adding another requirement for finding matches. For example, this rule would only match activities where both ‘happy’ AND ‘party’ were present in the text, in either order – this operates as Boolean AND logic.

  • happy party

Note: If the word 'AND' is placed in the rule instead of a white space, it will be rejected in the query string.

 

ORing terms with upper-case OR

Some situations call for Boolean OR logic.

  • happy OR party

Note: The OR operator must be upper-case and a lower-case ‘or’ will be treated as a regular keyword.

 

Negating Terms

Some scenarios might call for excluding results with certain keywords (a Boolean NOT logic). For example, activities with ‘happy’, but excluding any with ‘birthday’ in the text.

  • happy -birthday

Note: Negating terms should be conducted using the - sign as opposed to the word NOT.

 

Grouping or Nesting

These types of logic can be combined using grouping with parentheses, and expanded to much more complex queries.

  • (happy OR party) (holiday OR house) -(birthday OR democratic OR republican)

 

Exact match

To match an exact phrase enclose it within quotations.

  • "happy birthday"

 

Putting it all together

The above operators can be combined with text filters for a complex query. A query string looking for customer service issues or problem but not those that contain the work fix would be illustrated as:

  • ((("customer support") (issue OR problem)) (-"is fixed"))

In this query the terms customer support issue or customer support problem would be returned as results but any statements like "my customer support problem is fixed" or "my customer support issue is fixed" would be excluded.  Therefore statements like "my customer support issue is not fixed" or the customer support problem is not fixed" would be included in the results for customer resolution.

Parameters
The the following logic is supporting input in any field in the DigitalStakeout product where the helper text in the input says "Boolean filter."

Boolean Operators

 

  •     +"term" = term must be present
  •     -"term" = term must not be present, also works with NOT "term"
  •     +/- must not have space between it and the "term"


Proximity Search
 

  •     2 search terms MAX
  •     Both terms must be included in quotes, IE "black dog"
  •     Must include ~#, where # is the word boundary
  •     Example: "dog hurt"~4 would return every instance where dog and            hurt were within 4 words of each    
  •     other


Wildcards
 

  •     ? within a word will replace one character
  •     * can be used for expansion of partial words

    Example: *part* will bring back content with the words ‘party’ or ‘department’ or ‘parted’

NOTE: Wildcards can also be used as the first or last character of a word.

Fuzziness:

  •     Looks for misspellings
  •   Syntax: ~#, where # defaults to 2 when no number is used and can be   changed to 1. NOTE:Documentation does not specify a max number
  •   This covers anywhere within the word.


Restrictions:
Unlike the process for power rules in creating keyword searches, the Boolean searching covered here is not restricted on +/- operators. Instead it is limited to 16512 bytes as allocated in the database.




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