Running a dtSearch

Use dtSearch to complete stemming, fuzzy, and proximity searches on the information included in your dtSearch index.

Considerations and best practices

Consider the following before running a dtSearch.

• Pressing Enter between search terms in the Search Terms text box acts as spaces between terms and not as the AND or OR operator. Terms will not be searched for independently. They will be searched for as one search item.
  • Use AND or OR operators to search for terms independently.
  • For example, typing apples, pressing Enter, and typing pears searches for apples pears as one search item. However, typing apples OR pears searches for instances of the word apples or pears individually.
• dtSearch indexes are case insensitive by default.
  • All characters in a dtSearch index are normalized to lowercase. Relativity does not support case-sensitive dtSearch indexes. See Case-insensitive indexes for more information.
  • For example, if your exact phrase is an acronym like ACT, these will be included in the index: act, AcT, aCt, and similar.
• dtSearch combines text from multiple fields in the order they are added to the saved search. Make sure both lists of fields are ordered identically.
•  The maximum number of search terms is 65,000 characters.
  • Words longer than 32 characters are truncated during indexing.
  • For more information, see Searching for words longer than 32 characters.
• We recommend avoiding wildcards in your search terms.
  • Wildcards can slow searches.
  • Wildcards can return more documents than intended.
  • Leading wildcards should not be used. For example *ing.
• We recommend limiting proximity operators.
  • Large numbers of proximity operators within a single query can cause slower performance. For example, w/ or PRE/).
  • Nesting proximity operators can also cause performance problems. For example, dog w/5 (cat w/2 bird),
  • Queries can be difficult to read and understand.
• We recommend running multiple queries that return small numbers of documents.
  • We recommend writing specific search terms.
  • Avoid using one broad query.

Running a dtSearch in the search panel

To run a dtSearch in the Search panel from the Documents list in Relativity:

1. Navigate to the search panel.
2. Click Add Condition.
3. Select (Index Search) from the Add Condition drop-down list.

The (Index Search) window opens.

4. Select the name of your dtSearch index from the Index drop-down list.
5. Enter terms for the search in the Search Terms box.
• You can enter search terms on multiple lines (i.e., hit Enter), but the hard return will not be treated as an AND / OR operator.
• dtSearch indexes are case insensitive by default. All characters in a dtSearch index are normalized to lowercase. For example, if your exact phrase search is an acronym like ACT, you must build a case-sensitive dtSearch index.
• Your total number of search terms cannot exceed 65,000 characters. Additionally, words longer than 32 characters are truncated during indexing. For more information, see Searching for words longer than 32 characters.

The following table shows search string examples and their expected results. For more information, see Using dtSearch syntax options.

Search String	Returns Documents With...
apple pear	The exact phrase apple pear
"apple pear"	The exact phrase apple pear
apple AND pear	The word apple and the word pear
(apple and pear) AndAny (grape or banana)	Any document that contains apple and pear, with grape and banana also being counted as hits. Grape and banana aren't evaluated as conditions; they're simply added to the search results as optional terms to be highlighted if they appear in the document.
apple OR pear	Either apple or pear
apple W/5 pear	Apple appears within 5 words of pear
apple PRE/5 pear	Apple appears within 5 words before pear Note: Relativity does not use the POST operator. However, you can mimic this functionality by reversing the order of the terms, and using the PRE operator.
apple NOT W/5 pear	Appleoccurs not within 5 words of pear
apple AND NOT pear	Apple appears but pear does not
apple W/5 xfirstword	Apple appears in the first 6 words of the document
apple w/5 xlastword	Apple appears in the last 6 words of the document

You can access stemming or fuzziness for key terms by checking the Enable Stemming box or selecting a Fuzziness Level in the drop-down list.

6. (Optional) Add any additional search conditions.
7. Click Apply.

The search terms populate in the Search builder.

8. Click Run Search. To stop a long running search, click Cancel.

Click the Sort by rank checkbox to sort the results by order of relevance in relation to the search terms. The most relevant documents are listed at the top of the results set, with the least relevant documents, or the documents with the smallest number of keywords, is at the end of the list.

Running a dtSearch in the Search Browser

To run a dtSearch in the Search browser:

1. Click to access the Search browser from the Documents List.
2. Click New Search.
3. Enter required fields in the Information card.

4. Click Add Condition.
5. Select (Index Search) from the Add Condition drop-down list.

The (Index Search) window opens.

6. Select the name of your dtSearch index from the Index drop-down list.
7. Enter terms for the search in the Search Terms box.

You can enter search terms on multiple lines (i.e., hit Enter), but the hard return will not be treated as an AND / OR operator.

Your total number of search terms cannot exceed 65,000 characters.

The following table shows search string examples and their expected results. For more information, see Using dtSearch syntax options.

Search String	Returns Documents With...
apple pear	The exact phrase apple pear
"apple pear"	The exact phrase apple pear
apple AND pear	The word apple and the word pear
(apple and pear) AndAny (grape or banana)	Any document that contains apple and pear, with grape and banana also being counted as hits. Grape and banana aren't evaluated as conditions; they're simply added to the search results as optional terms to be highlighted if they appear in the document.
apple OR pear	Either apple or pear
apple W/5 pear	Apple appears within 5 words of pear
apple PRE/5 pear	Apple appears within 5 words before pear Note: Relativity does not use the POST operator. However, you can mimic this functionality by reversing the order of the terms, and using the PRE operator.
apple NOT W/5 pear	Apple does not appear within 5 words of pear
apple AND NOT pear	Apple appears but pear does not
apple W/5 xfirstword	Apple appears in the first 6 words of the document
apple w/5 xlastword	Apple appears in the last 6 words of the document

You can access stemming or fuzziness for key terms by checking the Enable Stemming box or selecting a Fuzziness Level in the drop-down list.

8. (Optional) Add any additional search conditions.
9. Click Apply.

The search terms populate in the Search builder.

8. Click Save or Save As.
9. Select the name of the dtSearch in the Search Browser.
10. Click Run Search. To stop a long running search, click Cancel.

Tap on the Sort by Rank check box beneath the search box to sort the results in order of the most relevance to your search terms. The most relevant documents are listed at the top of the results set, with the least relevant documents, or the documents with the smallest number of keywords, is at the end of the list.

Searching for words longer than 32 characters

When a word has more than 32 characters (none of which are whitespace, characters in the CJKRanges section, or symbols configured as spaces), dtSearch truncates the word and only indexes the first 32 characters. As a result, if you run a search on the first 32 characters, the search returns any words with 33 or more characters that contain the search term as the first 32 characters.

If you attempt to run a search with a string of 33 characters or more, dtSearch does not return any results because it does not truncate the query, and as we’ve seen, no word is longer than 32 characters. See below examples for reference.

Search	Length (in characters)	Returned results
supercalifragilisticexpialido	29	supercalifragilisticexpialido
supercalifragilisticexpialidoc	30	supercalifragilisticexpialidoc
supercalifragilisticexpialidoci	31	supercalifragilisticexpialidoci
supercalifragilisticexpialidocio	32	supercalifragilisticexpialidocio supercalifragilisticexpialidociou supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
supercalifragilisticexpialidociou	33	NO RESULTS
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious	34	NO RESULTS

• If you include a wildcard (*) after the 32nd character, you will get the exact same results as if you omitted the wildcard.
• You can use the following regular expression to search your dictionary for all 32-character words: ##.{32}