In Sybase Search, the use of synonyms and acronyms is collectively called query augmentation. Synonyms are implemented as lists of words that are considered to have the same meaning. For example:
drowsy, lethargic, listless, sleepy
holiday, vacation
When a term featured in a list is used as a query parameter,
all the other words in the list are appended to the query. For example,
the query The medicine made me drowsy,
when augmented using the synonym examples above, becomes The
medicine made me drowsy, lethargic, listless, sleepy.
Acronyms are implemented as a list of keys (or a single key) with a corresponding list of values. In the following example the keys “HTML” and “HTM” have the values “Hypertext Markup Language”:
HTML, HTM = Hypertext Markup Language
USA, US = United States of America
Acronyms can augment a query in two ways:
Acronym
expansion – when a term featured in an acronym key list
is found in a user’s search terms, all the corresponding
values are added to the original query. For example, the query How
to write HTML documents, when augmented with
the acronym examples above, becomes How to write
HTML Hypertext Markup Language documents.
Acronym
resolution – when a list of terms featured as an acronym
values list is found in a user’s search terms, all the
corresponding keys are added to the original query. For example, the
query How to write Hypertext Markup Language documents,
when augmented with the acronym examples above, becomes How
to write Hypertext Markup Language HTML HTM documents.
You can change the list of synonyms and acronyms in one of two ways:
Edit the list of words in the default synonyms and acronyms file located in <installLocation>\OmniQ\config\query_aug_en.txt, or
Create a new query augmentation file and configure the Text Manager to read from the new file, by editing <installLocation>\OmniQ\config\TextModule.default.xml and changing the value of the query.augmentor.filename parameter to point to the new file.
The query augmentation list must be UTF-8 encoded. Synonyms
and acronyms are processed at runtime, so you can edit the augmentation
list without having to index any documents again. However, you must
restart Sybase Search to load the new synonym and acronym lists.
