Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Words and Phrases
| 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. |
Using Boolean Operators
| Search for | Operator | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Two or more words in the same topic |
|
|
| Either word in a topic |
|
|
| Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
|
|
| Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
|
| A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
|
- Information retrieval (IR) expert parameters
- ir_asynchronous
- ir_autostop
- ir_boost_same_sequence
- ir_cluster_closeness
- ir_cluster_symbol
- ir_disable
- ir_language
- ir_languagefiles_path
- ir_max_clusters
- ir_max_relevant_answers
- ir_max_shared
- ir_min_cluster_members
- ir_minidf
- ir_opt_path
- ir_prefix
- ir_query_drop_off
- ir_sql_limit
- ir_term_drop_off
- ir_timelimit
Information Retrieval (IR) expert parameters: ir_term_drop_off
Parameter
ir_term_drop_off
Description
This parameter defines the maximum frequency (expressed as a percentage) with which search terms can appear in the Information Retrieval (IR) index before Service Manager excludes them from search results. Service Manager ranks each search term, based on how frequently it appears in the index. The less frequently that a term appears in the index, the more relevance Service Manager assigns to it in search results. If a term appears too frequently in the index then Service Manager ignores the search term as if it were in the stop word list.
Service Manager determines both a term search frequency and a relevance ranking for each search term. The search term frequency is a simple percentage that is calculated with the following formula:
<number of instances of search term in index>/terms in index * 100
The relevance ranking is determined by computing an IDF value. Service Manager uses the following formula to compute the IDF value of search terms:
[natural log (<terms in index>/<number of instances of search term in index>)]+1
For example, in an index of 1000 terms, a search term that appears 250 times in the index has a frequency percentage of 25% and an IDF value of 2.4. Since this is above the maximum frequency percentage value of 22%, Service Manager ignores the term as too frequent. A search term that appears only 10 times in a 1000 term index however has a frequency percentage of 1% and an IDF value of 5.6. Since this term is within the percentage frequency threshold, Service Manager includes it in the search results, although it will not be as relevant as search terms with a lower IDF value.
Valid if set from
Server's operating system command prompt
Initialization file (sm.ini)
Requires restart of the Service Manager server?
Yes
Default value
22
Possible values
Maximum percentage frequency
Example usage
Command line: sm -httpPort:13080 -ir_term_drop_off:25
Initialization file: ir_term_drop_off:25
Related topics
Related topics
Enter a parameter in the sm.ini file
Related topics
