Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`

Service Management2017.11

Administer > Database administration > Data persistence > Database dictionary > Alias fields

Alias fields

An alias field is a field that has a different name but the same index, level, and type as an existing field. Alias fields are used to streamline file maintenance; force fully keyed queries, such as those in the Incident Management and Service Desk applications; and facilitate virtual joining. Alias fields are only supported for scalar fields of the following data types: number, character, date/time, logical. The functionality is not designed to work for other data types like arrays and structures.

If regular purge and archive tasks are performed on files with different field names for the search criteria, such as close.time in the problem and probsummary files, msg.time in the msglog file, and evtime in the eventin file, you can build an alias in each file called archive.time and then perform all archive activity based on archive.time without regard to the file name.

In Service Desk and Incident Management, alias keys are used to ensure that a fully keyed query is performed each time an argument is entered from a record list. For more information see the Incident Management Help.

Source fields are defined as an alias when they must be defined as both a normal link and a virtual join; and the target file or field is different. For example, in the devicepc database dictionary record and the device.pc format and link records, the vj.logical.name field is the alias of the logical.name field.

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