Building Oracle XML Applications

The interMedia Query Language

As we’ve learned, interMedia by default performs case-insensitive word matching, ignoring punctuation. So the CONTAINS query:

snow

matches all the following:

snow man
Snow Day
Let it snow!

A multiple-word query is treated as a phrase search. The words must come in the specified order, with no intervening words. For instance, the query:

snow tires

matches:

Snow tires are required.
Very deep snow -- tires require chains.

but not:

Bob quickly tires -- snow shoveling is hard work.  (incorrect order)
Snow man tires are the best you can buy!           (intervening words)

The query language also offers familiar Boolean operators. The query:

snow AND tires

finds any document with the word “snow” as well as the word “tires,” while:

snow OR tires

finds any document with the word “snow” or the word “tires,” or both. Parentheses can be used for grouping:

(rain OR snow) AND tires

Keep in mind that this whole expression is a single argument to the SQL CONTAINS function, so a real query would look like this:

SELECT claimid
  FROM claim
 WHERE CONTAINS(damagereport, '(rain OR now) AND tires') > 0

The WITHIN Operator

The syntax of the WITHIN operator is fairly simple:

                  text_subquery WITHIN elementname

text_subquery can involve words, phrases, Boolean operators—pretty much anything and everything we’ve seen so far. element can be any XML tag. Although XML tags and XPath queries are case-sensitive, the interMedia query language is not, so all case variations of the tag are matched. In most search applications, ...