Glossary

keep character

• when modifying a record in DATADEX, the character you type to leave the leading bytes of a character field unchanged so that you can modify the trailing bytes.

key

• a field, or column, that is used to select records from a data set, providing fast access to rows. Keys are typically indexed, uniquely identify parent rows, and provide a correlation for joining tables and maintaining data integrity across tables. See also Native keys and OMNIDEX indexes.

key options

• enhancements to OMNIDEX keys that are specified during installation to enable certain retrieval features (like Grouping) or update features (like Batch indexing).

keyed retrieval

• retrieval by an OMNIDEX or TurboIMAGE key field.

keyword

• A word or number that is indexed for an MDK Index
• An individual word or value in an MDK Index column delimited by spaces and punctuation. For example, if an MDK Index column contains “Kraft-Ebbing's Bait and Tackle” the words “KRAFT”, “EBBING”, “EBBING'S”, “BAIT”, and “TACKLE” are indexed as keywords.

keyword access

• the ability to find rows based on the words contained in a given field, regardless of the order in which the words appear. This is a primary feature of OMNIDEX indexes.

keyword indexes

• indexes composed of a word or words from a specified field in a database row. Renamed to MDK Indexes.

keyword lookup

• to look up data by words embedded within strings of text.

keyword retrieval

• refers to an OMNIDEX retrieval of record identifiers by any keyword value or combination of keyword values against an MDK Index.

keyword-only retrieval

• an OMNIDEX retrieval that fetches only keyword values from the indexes. Through OmniAccess, you would call oaqualify with the KEYWD option, and then call oafetchkeys.