SAP ABAP Data Element COM_SEARCH_TV_SEARCH_TERM_F4 (Input Field for Full Text Search)
Hierarchy
☛ SAP_BASIS (Software Component) SAP Basis Component
   ⤷ BC-TRX-SES (Application Component) TREX Search Engine Service
     ⤷ SES_ENDUSER_TEXT (Package) SES: End user UI elements -> Translate to maximum languages
Basic Data
Data Element COM_SEARCH_TV_SEARCH_TERM_F4
Short Description Input Field for Full Text Search  
Data Type
Category of Dictionary Type D   Domain
Type of Object Referenced     No Information
Domain / Name of Reference Type RSDSSELOPT    
Data Type CHAR   Character String 
Length 45    
Decimal Places 0    
Output Length 45    
Value Table      
Further Characteristics
Search Help: Name    
Search Help: Parameters    
Parameter ID   
Default Component name SEARCH_TERM_F4   
Change document    
No Input History    
Basic direction is set to LTR    
No BIDI Filtering    
Field Label
  Length  Field Label  
Short 10 Search 
Medium 15 Full Txt Search 
Long 20 Full Text Search 
Heading 45 Full Text Search 
Documentation

Definition

This is the input field of the Search Engine Service (SES) for full text searches on business objects.

The scope of the full text search offered here includes searching through all short texts and long texts as well as most attributes of a business object.

The attributes of a business object are the single fields, that you can see on its data screen. For example ID, name, and postal code of a business partner. Attributes that have very few different values (for example, only 1; 2; 3) are excluded, because they are not very selective in a full text search.

Functionality

Besides its scope, the behaviour of the full text search is characterized by the following features. They were all designed to increase the number of results and thus increase the likelihood that the results include the object that you are searching for.

  • Consideration of languages
    In many multilingual systems, a lot of objects are not consistently maintained in all system languages. Therefore the searches are always performed across all maintained languages.
  • Case-insensitive search
    Assuming that in most cases it makes no difference in meaning, all searches are case-insensitive.
  • Linguistic search
    Another comfort feature is that searches for texts are performed in linguistic mode by default. For example, a search for "house" returns "houses" as well.
  • Fuzzy search
    Searching in fuzzy mode returns objects even if the search term or the object itself contains spelling mistakes. Note that the search engine automatically reduces the fuzziness when the search term is too short.

    If the fuzzy mode option is not available on the user interface to be activated manually, it is automatically activated if no results are found without it. If the fuzzy search is subsequently successful, the system displays a message that the results were only found during a fuzzy search.
  • Wildcards
    The following wildcards are available:
    • The asterisk '*' represents multiple unknown characters in a search term.
    • The plus sign '+' represents a single unknown character in a search term.

Use

  • The advantage of using the full text search, supplied with this input field, is that you do not need to know which text or attribute you must use for the search: As long as your search term is highly selective, a full text search does not return too many results. A good example of a highly selective search term is the serial number of a piece of equipment.

    However, if there is no such selective search term in your situation and the result list becomes too long, you should make use of the advanced search screen, where you can combine the full text search with an attribute search, utilizing the attribute search as a filter for your business area, your plant, or some other differentiator.
  • Note that there is a slight difference between the text search and the attribute search: Attributes are usually indexed as strings and search terms must completely match these strings. But texts are split into single words before being indexed and even word combinations are split up.

    So if you want to be sure to find all combinations of your search term in an attribute search, you must put it between asterisks, like "*abc*", whereas in a text search this might not be necessary.

    Another consequence of the difference in indexing between text and attributes is that the standard multiple selection (select options with ranges), which you may know from the attribute search, is not applicable to the text search. However, you can enter multiple search terms in the full text search input field and the system understands them as being combined with "and". For example, if you enter "house blue", the system understands this as a search for "house AND blue". So all objects that contain both the words "house" and "blue" appear in the hit list.

Dependencies

A search engine can only search through the objects that have already been indexed in the search engine. The topicality of the search results therefore depends on the frequency of the indexing job.

Example

History
Last changed by/on SAP  20051219 
SAP Release Created in 700