This is an old revision of the document!
Administration: Omnidex Indexing
PowerSearch
Overview | Example | SQL | Optimization | Tips
Example
In this example of PowerSearch, a user is trying to find a person in the database. They searched the database with many incorrect pieces of information, but still found who they were looking for.
The user was looking for a Bill Meyers who lived on Fifth Avenue in NY, NY. They provided zip codes, phone numbers and email address. All of those were incorrect pieces of information, but they were still enough to find the record.
How PowerSearch Helped
This is a classic example of how difficult it can be to find what you are looking for in a database. The user entered all of the information they knew, and without PowerSearch, they would not have found what they were looking for. Here are the tools that PowerSearch used to locate the record:
| Column | User Input | Actual Data | PowerSearch Technique |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Name | Bill | William | Synonym List of Given Names |
| Last Name | Meyers | Myers | Phonetic Search |
| Address | 825 Fifth Avenue | 825 5th Ave | Synonym List of Postal Abbreviations |
| City | NY | New York | Synonyn List of City Abbreviations |
| Zip Code | 10022 | 10021 | Geographic Search for Nearby Zip Codes |
| Area Code | 917 | 212 | Synonym List of Shared Area Codes |
| Phone Number | 755-4686 | 775-4866 | Transposition and Incorrect Digits |
| E-mail Address | wmeyers@med.cornell.edu | wmyers@med.cornell.edu | Misspelling Search |
PowerSearch used a combination of tools to find the row. It used a given name synonym list for the first name, a phonetic search for the last name, a postal abbreviations synonym list for the address, common nicknames for the city, a geographic radius search for the zip code, sy
Additional Resources
See also: