Immediate Search

You may immediately perform searches from any page in the user interface. There is always a search text box in the top right corner.

Steps

Click in the Search text box in the upper right.
Enter any text.
Click SHOW MORE or press ENTER to show a search worksheet of the results.

You may specify a persona (e.g., All Objects or Data Inventory) in the pull-down to the left of the search box to set the basis or scope with initial filtering of the search results and explore results.

Example

You search for any object containing the word "purchase".

Relevance and Ordering of Results: The first object in the list of results are those which are certified. The presentation order of the search results is altered by actions like certification. To learn more, go here.

Semantic Search: The search uses semantic search rules so that you may specify fairly sophisticated queries within a simple syntax. This syntax is documented here.

Personas in Search

Personas are a feature that allows users to concentrate on models and objects that are most relevant to them. Administrators can create and share these personas which are then assigned to users. Users may then choose from a list of available personae or All Objects (none). The pick list is available just to the left of the Search text box, on the right side of the header.

Once a persona is chosen, that all search results and model browse (in OBJECTS > Explore) results will be filtered to match the criteria in the persona. This functionality gives administrators a powerful tool to personalize and tailor users' search and browsing experience, enhancing focus and relevance.

The lineage functionality may include objects outside the Search View scope. These objects will be fully accessible in the lineage UI, including their details and the option to open them, but they will not appear in the Object Explorer.

Select Data Inventory from the persona pull-down to the left of the search box and click in the search text box again.

The results have changed, as the Data Inventory persona pre-filters the results, where All Objects did not. With the Data Inventory persona selected, only columns and tables (or their equivalent) are displayed, whereas we saw relationships, etc., with All Objects.

Click Enter to open the search worksheet.

The search Filters panel show the persona filter, and the name proposed at the top is the persona name.

Explore Further

Open the (Object Page for the) Object

Click any object in the results or any of the structures in its Context (or model path) to view the object page.

Click Purchase Order (from Accounts Payable) which is the second item in the results.

Recently Found Objects

The search will initially show recent search requests that you may select even before you type anything in the text box.

PurchaseOrder is only found in the Recently found objects dialog as we had actually clicked on it in the search results and thus opened its object page.

Show the Full Results

Only the most relevant few results are listed in the immediate search dropdown. Press ENTER or click SHOW MORE to present the results as a search worksheet t.

Search text in

Click Search Options to specify what textual properties to search in.

If you press ENTER or click SHOW MORE, these options will be carried forward to the filter for the results as a search worksheet.

Search in Model

Generally, the scope of searching is the current configuration. However, you may perform searches within the scope of a given model rather than the entire configuration.

Steps

Navigating to a model’s homepage.
Click on the More actions icon and select Search in Model.
You are presented with a search worksheet.

Example

Go to the object page for the Data Lake model.

Click More Actions and select Search in Model, and search for any object containing the word "ssn".

All the same search options as for the immediate search are here.

Search Text

When searching, once you are on the results page, you may specify what fields to search for in terms of text. By default only the name and physical name are searched. All options are:

Name
Physical name
Description
Others, which includes other text properties (like comment) and custom attributes.

Search Syntax

This search is based on the popular Apache Lucene search engine (possibly implemented on a Solr server) where the indexing of words in names and description:

ignores case sensitivity. Therefore, search for Customer will also return customer, and CUSTOMER.
ignores any space or special characters such as _ : . [ ] ( ) which are treated as word breakers by the search tokenizer. Therefore, search for "Customer ID" will also return: 2023_CUSTOMER_ID, Customer:ID, Customer[id].

When using the search in the UI:

Before you type, a simple click will list the history of your previous searches.
As you type, search is automatically activated offering you choices that you can select in the suggested list in matching priority order. Hit enter only to go to the advanced search window.

Basic Search

You may search for very precise results by specifying a search using the built-in query language (similar to popular web based search engines) as follows:

To search for	Example	Result
Any words	sales order	Matching the words "sales" or "order".
Consecutive Words (Phrase)	“sales order”	Matching the consecutive words (phrase) of "sales" followed by "order", with possible extra special characters in between, and possible extra words before or after that phrase.
Exact Words (Phrase)	.“sales_order”	Matching the exact words (phrase) "sales_order", without any other special characters in between, and without any other words before or after that phrase (still in any case sensitivity).
All Words	+sales +order	Matching BOTH the words “sales” and “order”.
Exclude Words	sales –order	Matching the word “sales” but cannot contain the word “order”.
Wild Card End	sale*	Matching the word "sales" only at the beginning.
Parent and Child	sales.order	Matching a parent named “sales” and a child named “order”. E.g., the attribute “order” contained within the entity “sales”.

One can, of course, append these together into a search string. E.g.:

Sales +order -date property:physicalname type:column

When searching for words with spaces or punctuation characters, such exact words must be quoted (e.g. "Product SKU"). By default, the search is only based on the name.

Use the text search options to search in descriptions and more).

Case sensitivity varies by object. The search is case-sensitive search for objects, like Labels, and custom attributes and case-insensitive for text, like name and description, by default.

For system objects, like Labels, in general the UI is defined to allow you to pick the object (not the text of its name). You can define two Labels, web and Web, and search for any or all of them. When you need to search for both web and Web labels you should use the Equal ANY option.

The characters "" (underscore), ":" (colon), "'" (single quote) and "." (dot) as well as white space characters are treated as word breakers by the search tokenizer. Therefore the search text "_end" will be tokenized as "pll" and thus will match both "example_end" and "append". Furthermore, any search text that is not quoted by the double quote character (") will be surrounded by the wildcard character to match more objects. If you do not want wildcard characters to be added, quote the search text with the double quote character, i.e. make the search text " end ". You will find objects with only "_ end " not "append".

Semantic Search

In addition, the semantic search offers the use of the following key words in your search:

Object Types: term, dataset, attribute, entity, table, column, file, field, database, model, data model, and report. Such key words can be used in singular or plural (e.g. terms).
Model Categories: glossary, glossaries, database, databases, db, modeling, data modeling, bi, reporting, tableau, bo, cognos, and obi.

Note that the above key words do not need to be quoted when space is used (e.g. data model).

Then such key words can be used in a user friendly convenient syntax with additional qualifier key words as follows:

customer table : returns all database tables having customer in the name.
datasets with ssn : returns all tables (or files) with a column (or fields) having ssn in the name.
tables with sensitive label : returns all tables with a label applied to them having sensitive in the name.
customer in tableau : returns any tableau BI reports having customer in the name of any objects.

If Semantic Search is not enabled then the "smart search" is in effect along with simple text search.

If Semantic Search is enable then the smart search does not function, but the semantic search does.

The search uses semantic search rules so that you may specify fairly sophisticated queries within a simple syntax. This syntax is documented below.

Semantic Search BNF Syntax

<semantic search query> ::= <type> | <children> | <label> |
<category>

<type> ::= <name> <types>

<name> ::= <alphanumeric>+ | "<character>+"

<types> ::= Database | Tables |Table | "table" | "files" |
"file" |

"attributes" | "attribute" | "columns" | "column" |
"fields" | "field" |

"reports" | "report" |

"terms" | "term" |

"databases" | "database" |

"data models" | "data model" | "models" | "model"

<children> ::= <types> "with" <name>

<label> ::= <types> "with" <name> "label"

<category> ::= <name> "in" <categories>

<categories> ::= "glossary" | "glossaries" | "database" |
"databases" | "db" | "modeling" | "data modeling" | "bi"
| "reporting" | "tableau" | "bo" | "cognos" | "obi"

Example

Search for Any Words

Enter "customer id" in the search box and press ENTER.

The results include all those objects matching any of the words, in this case "customer" or "id". The search is case insensitive.

Category Group Number is included because the search is by default for all text fields, not just name.

Click Search Options and only select Name

Category Group Number is not included anymore..

CustomerPoInvoiceItem is included because "customer" is one of the words and camel case is recognized as separated by a special character.

Search for Consecutive Words (Phrase)

Introducing quotation marks (") around the search text limits the results further.

Enter '"customer id"' in the search box and press ENTER.

The results include all those objects matching the consecutive words (phrase) of "customer" followed by "id", with possible extra special characters in between, and possible extra words before or after that phrase.

Customer_ID is included because underscore (_) is considered a special character that is treated as a space character.

Customer ID 1 is included because results will include matches with extra words before or after the phrase.

1972_Customer_Number is include because its Definition include "Customer ID".

Search for Exact Words (Phrase)

Introducing a period (.) in front of the quoted the search text limits the results further, ensuring an exact match.

Enter '."customer id"' in the search box and press ENTER.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically
generated

The results include all those objects matching the exact words (phrase) "customer id", without any other special characters in between, and without any other words before or after that phrase (still in any case sensitivity).

All the other non-exact matches seen in the Any Word or Consecutive Words (Phrase) search are no longer shown.