Find and limits with Text Block data type fields (e.g. Description, etc.)

Manual:

Users often complain that when they do a Find or QuickFind using a multi-word term only the first word is matched. The choice of operator(contain, matches, etc. is immaterial. The reason is that Text block fields such as 'Description' - as opposed to Text (String) fields - have a searching limitation which is inherent to the underlying CTree database engine in Portfolio (or the way it's implemented. Back when Portfolio was designed and desktop computers were relatively less powerful, because Text Block fields can hold a max of 32k characters (as opposed to a max of 249 for a Text field) Text Block field were indexed in a different way to other field data types. The upshot is matching is only possible at single word level.

In lay terms the result is whilst you can search a Text field for a phrase, e.g. 'black dog', you can't to the same for a Text Block. In the latter case only 'black' will be matched. So, like it or not, doing this search:

...is effectively the same as doing this:

Although you can do a two term search (having overcome #1 above) - one each for 'black' and 'dog':

...the words matched may not occur in the order assumed, or even next door to one another. All these would match the above:

• A black dog asleep on a rug.
• A black rug with a dog asleep on it.
• A dog asleep on a black rug.

NOTE: there is no workaround for this. SQL connect user could make a custom SQL query directly to the SQL database though this would have to be done via a script/applet as it's not possible to hook into the actual client UI.

Keywords (to assist indexing/searching):

Question: Find and limits with Text Block data type fields (e.g. Description, etc.) [FAQ00399.htm]
Last Update:- 12 October 2007

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