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Search Oakville Tourism - Help

The following provides a reference for the various search capabilities of this website.

return to Search Oakville Tourism
 

Search Type

any of the words or all of the words
Finds a list of words or phases
  • use "quotation marks" around phrases
  • add + in front of any word or phrase to require it
  • add - in front of any word or phrase or to exclude it
  • examples:
    banana pear "apple pie"
    "apple pie" -salad +"ice cream"
exact phrase
Finds a single phrase (quotation marks are optional)

boolean
Finds a structured group of words or phrases linked by and, or, not, w/.

  • examples:
    tart apple pie - the entire phrase must be present
    apple pie and pear tart - both phrases must be present
    apple pie or pear tart - either phrase must be present
    apple pie and not pear tart - only apple pie must be present
    apple w/5 pear - apple must occur within 5 words of pear
    apple not w/27 pear - apple must not occur within 27 words of pear
    subject contains apple pie - finds apple pie in a subject field
  • use ( ) when a search includes two or more connectors:
    apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange)

Search Features

stemming
Finds grammatical variations on endings, like applies, applied, applying in a search for apply

fuzzy searching
Finds words even if they are misspelled.  A search for alphabet with a fuzziness of 1 would also find alphaqet.  With a fuzziness of 3, the same search would find both alphaqet and alpkaqet

phonic searching
Finds words that sound alike, like Smythe in a search for Smith

Special Characters

  • ? matches any single character - appl? matches apply or apple
  • * matches any number of characters - appl*ion matches application
  • ~~ indicates numeric range - 14~~18 looks for 14, 15, 16, 17 or 18
  • xfirstword matches the first word of a document - apple pie w/10 xfirstword
  • xlastword matches the last word of a document - apple pie w/10 xlastword
  • variable term weights - A number after a word assigns a specific positive or negative weight when ranking retrieved documents. Example:
    apple:5 salad:-2 

Fields in XML and Other Documents

  • Search Oakville automatically detects fields in supported file types:
    (author contains John Smith) and (subject contains turbine generators)
  • A query can combine a full-text component with a fielded data components:
    (author contains John Smith) and turbine generators
  • Search Oakville field searching fully supports the hierarchical nature of XML data
  • Search Oakville supports searches limited to precise combinations of fields and subfields
  • Examples:
    persona contains Henry - finds Henry in a persona field
    scene/stagedir contains exeunt citizens - finds a stagedir field containing exeunt citizens, directly nested in a field called scene)
    scene/speech/line contains publius - finds a scene/speech/line field sequence that contained publius)
    /play/title contains Henry the Fifth - finds a play field at the top of the hierarchy, with a title field just beneath it containing Henry the Fifth)
    scene//line contains publius - finds a line field containing publius from anwhere beneath the scene field)
    Henry the Fifth and (scene//line contains publius) - same as above, with a full-text search for Henry the Fifth)
Download the 2010-2011 Visitor Guide
Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts
Oakville Galleries
Oakville Museum at Erchless Estate
Oakville Public Library
Oakville Transit
tourism@oakville.ca Indulge in a little Oakville toll free: 877-OAKVILLE (625-8455)