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Tildes (~) Ate My Search

Laserfiche Search and Retrieval

Updated April 10

posted on April 4 • Show version history

We noticed recently that the search engine is adding tildes to our searches. It slows them down horribly, and there does not seem to be a way to get rid of them. V11 system, BTW.

Rather than searching for [Field] = "My Value", it interprets the search as [Field] ~= "My Value", meaning something roughly like my value. This generates a huge result set and takes forever to complete.

For instance:

This is a very precisely indexed repo. Here we are looking for exactly Customer Number 281, and exactly Proof of Delivery Documents over a specific date range. Not somewhat like 281 or somewhat like Proof of Delivery.

The search as is takes minutes to complete. But if we edit the search syntax by removing the tildes the search drops to seconds. Both fields are indexed in this case.

In Tools, Options, Search Options, Search, General, Search Options you have two selections that broaden searches, but these boxes are checked off.

We have also added and removed indexing from different fields, and this does not seem to directly correlate. So, does anyone know how to remove this unexpected and unwanted feature?

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replied on April 5 • Show version history

Thanks Miruna - What I read from that is that fields with precise values (a Check Number, a Date, etc.) should NOT be indexed in the Admin Console. Rather, index fields with some ambiguity should be. Indexing is the equivalent of a fuzzy search for template fields - it will give you what you want, and then a lot of what you may not want, just in case. Example, if a company name is entered manually, without using a list of a lookup, you might get multiple variations of the same thing. Fields like that would be candidates to be indexed.

Update: We removed indexing from the fields in question and the search performance improved dramatically. The documentation spells out the use case clearly. In most cases the idea of indexing would improve performance, but for most fields, the opposite is true.

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replied on April 4

Looks like those respective fields have been marked as indexed, which directs searches through the Full-text search engine rather than directly searching in the database. Since the feature is opt-in, the clients assume that you want to use it and default searches to the syntax for it.

The option for partial matches wouldn't be relevant for these searches.

You can remove the "indexed" option from the field properties in the Admin Console.

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Tildes (~) Ate My Search

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