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 > Queries > Complex query expressions > Relational operators

Relational operators

Relational operators compare values and return True, False, or Unknown. Whenever a comparison is executed against a null value, ITSMA Service Management returns Unknown. For example, if you are searching for all contact records matching the query shift="day" all contact records without a value in the shift field will return Unknown.

The most efficient relational operator in a query is the equal to (=) relational operator, for which exact results are returned. Although queries using this operator are valid for all field types, it is seldom used for queries to date or time fields. For date and time fields, the greater than (>) and less than (<) operators are more efficient because the values returned when using these operators include seconds.

Relational Operator	Definition
#	starts with
~#	does not start with
=	equal to
~=	not equal to
<>, ><	not equal to
<	less than
<= or =<	less than or equal to
>	greater than
>= or =>	greater than or equal to
isin	is element in
like	is similar to

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