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Field Condition Syntax

The following sections describe how to create simple and complex conditions on infoton field values. The conditions appear in the value of the qp parameter, as follows:

<cmwellhost>/<path>?op=search&qp=<field conditions>

Single Condition Syntax

A single condition's syntax is:

(FieldOperator) FieldName ComparisonOperator FieldValue

These are the components of the condition:

  1. FieldOperator - An optional field operator (- to indicate negation or * to indicate an optional condition). If no field operator is used, the field condition must apply to all query results.
  2. FieldName - The name of the field on which you want to apply the condition.
  3. ComparisonOperator - The comparison operator.
  4. FieldValue - The field value.

Here are some examples of field conditions:

Example Description
-TRCSAssetClass.mdaas:Ordinary TRCSAssetClass must not equal "Ordinary"
CommonName.mdaas::Intel CommonName must be an exact match of "Intel"
dsQuotationNumber.mdaas>290670 dsQuotationNumber must be greater than 290670

Comparison Operators

The following table describes the different comparison operators you can apply to field values.

Operator Apply to: Description Example
: Any literal type Partial match. True if the value operand is contained in the field value. This operator is case-insensitive. CommonName.mdaas:new matches both "New Balance" and "New Generation" CommonName values.
:: string Exact match. True if the value operand equals the field value. This operator is case-sensitive. CommonName.mdaas::Intel
~ string Fuzzy match. True if the value operand is an approximate partial match of the field value. Fuzzy match ignores a certain amount of extra, missing or transposed characters. CommonName.mdaas~converse matches "Tae Gwang Commerce", "Rydex Inverse NASDAQ-100 Strategy Fund", "Cloverie PLC Series 2009-01"...
> Number and date values Greater than* instrumentExpiryDate.mdaas>2015-01-01
>> Number and date values Equal or greater than* organizationTier.fedapioa>>2
\< Number and date values Less than* modifiedByAnalystId.fedapioa<100
\<\< Number and date values Equal or less than* modifiedByAnalystId.fedapioa<100

Note

Comparison order depends on the field's type, as defined in RDF:

* Numeric for number values
* Lexicographic for strings
* Chronological for date/datetime values

Note

Fuzzy matches may return a very large number of results. It is recommended to limit fuzzy match queries with other constraints and/or the length parameter.

Field Values

Field values are alphanumeric strings. Do not use surrounding quotation marks.

Field value examples:

Coca%20Cola, 12345, 23andme

Certain characters require special handling.

As is standard for URLs, all characters except for A–Z, a–z, 0–9, *, -, . and _ must be encoded as %HH (their hexadecimal representation). For example, spaces are encoded as %20, # characters are encoded as %23, and so on.

Characters that have a special meaning in CM-Well query syntax must be escaped in a different way. These include the characters: :, <, >, $, , and ]. To include one of these characters in a field value, escape the entire field value by surrounding it with $ characters on each side.

For example: width:length should be escaped as $width:length$.

To include the $ character, double the character in the field value, to differentiate it from the escaping characters.

For example: parent$child should be escaped as $parent$$child$.

Multiple Conditions ("AND")

To apply multiple field conditions, add several condition to the query, separated by commas. Infotons that match the query must fulfill all the conditions in the list. The comma is the equivalent of the Boolean AND operator.

Example:

This query returns organization infotons with a city value of "Rochester" and a state value of "New York".

<cm-well-host>/permid.org/?op=search&qp=organizationCity.mdaas:Rochester,organizationStateProvince.mdaas:New%20York

Optional Conditions ("OR")

CM-Well query syntax does not support an "OR" operator, but instead it supports the * operator to indicate that a condition is optional. This allows you to effectively implement an OR operation.

For example, to search for organizations that have an address in New York state, and optionally have an address in Nevada, you can use this query:

<cm-well-host>/permid.org?op=search&qp=organizationStateProvince.mdaas:New%20York,*organizationStateProvince.mdaas:Nevada

If you make both state conditions optional, the query will return organizations that have an address either in New York state or in Nevada:

<cm-well-host>/permid.org?op=search&qp=*organizationStateProvince.mdaas:New%20York,*organizationStateProvince.mdaas:Nevada

The * operator does not precisely translate to "optional", as the query above means that at least one of the conditions must be met. Thus, the effect is the same as putting a Boolean OR operator between the two conditions.

Negative Conditions ("NOT")

To specify that a certain condition should not be met, you can precede the condition with the - operator. This is equivalent to preceding a condition with the Boolean NOT operator.

For example, to retrieve all organizations that do not have an address in New York state, you could run the following query:

<cm-well-host>/permid.org?op=search&qp=-organizationStateProvince.mdaas:New%20York

Grouped Conditions

You may want to apply a - or * operator to several conditions. To do this, surround the list of conditions with [ ] brackets, and apply the operator before the brackets.

For example, to retrieve all organizations whose address is neither in New York state nor in California, you could run the following query:

<cm-well-host>/permid.org?op=search&qp=-[organizationStateProvince.mdaas:New%20York,organizationStateProvince.mdaas:California]

Field Identifiers

See Field Name Formats.

Data Fields and Metadata (System) Fields

When infotons are created in CM-Well, they are usually created together with data fields, which are uploaded in the form of triples related to the infoton. The data fields are often derived from another data structure, such as CommonName fields that come from Organization Authority.

CM-Well also maintains its own internal administrative details about each infoton, and it stores these details in system metadata fields. These are items such as the datetime the infoton was last modified, or the internal UUID for the infoton.

When you query for infotons, both data fields and system metadata fields are returned in the results. You can apply conditions to the metadata fields as well as the data fields (see Field Identifiers).