Searching for unindexed terms

Text indexes are built according to the settings defined for the text configuration object used to create the text index. A term does not appear in a text index if any of the following conditions are true:

  • the term is included in the stoplist
  • the term is shorter than the minimum term length
  • the term is longer than the maximum term length

If you search for a term that is not in the text index, the term is dropped before the query is processed. The exact way that it is dropped depends on where the term is specified. For example, suppose in the following that the term 'the' is in the stoplist:

  • If the term appears on either side of an AND, OR, or NEAR, then both the operator and the term are removed. For example, searching for 'the AND apple', 'the OR apple', or 'the NEAR apple' are equivalent to searching for 'apple'.
  • If the term appears on the right side of an AND NOT, both the AND NOT and the term are dropped. For example, searching for 'apple AND NOT the' is equivalent to searching for 'apple'.

    If the term appears on the left side of an AND NOT, it is not dropped and, consequently, no rows are returned.

  • If the term appears in a phrase, the phrase is allowed to match with any term at the unindexed term's position. For example, searching for 'feed the dog' matches 'feed the dog', 'feed my dog', 'feed any dog', and so on.

If none of the terms you are searching for are in the text index, no rows are returned. For example, suppose both 'the' and 'a' are in the stoplist. Searching for 'a OR the' returns no rows.

See also
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