Performing a literal search
Literal search is useful mainly for performing case-insensitive search on short character fields such as name fields where a very small set of requests match the search criteria. However, you can add a leading or trailing wildcard to increase the scope of a literal search.
To perform a literal search
- Open a form in which you want to search the records.
- In a field, enter the exact words or character string that you want to search.
If you use both, a leading and trailing wildcard, a literal search becomes the equivalent of a word or phrase search. For information about word or phrase search, see Searching-for-words-or-phrases.
The syntax for such a search qualification is:
For example, to search for the word firewall, enter:
With this example, a full text search finds requests where the entire content of the field is firewall.
The following table provides some examples of the search results of a literal search. The table shows a sample qualification and the possible instances that might be available in the database (Example data column). The Matches column highlights only those instances that are displayed as results for that qualification criteria:
Qualification | Example data | Matches |
<field> LIKE "firewall" | firewall blocks access | |
firewall will block access | ||
firewall blocking my access | ||
firewall blocked her access | ||
firewall did not block access | ||
have the firewall block access | ||
firewall is not working | ||
try blocking his access | ||
<field> LIKE "firewall will block access" | firewall blocks access | |
firewall will block access | ✅️ | |
firewall blocking my access | ||
firewall blocked her access | ||
firewall did not block access | ||
have the firewall block access | ||
firewall is not working | ||
try blocking his access | ||
<field> LIKE "%firewall%" | firewall blocks access | ✅️ |
firewall will block access | ✅️ | |
firewall blocking my access | ✅️ | |
firewall blocked her access | ✅️ | |
firewall did not block access | ✅️ | |
have the firewall block access | ✅️ | |
firewall is not working | ✅️ | |
try blocking his access | ||
<field> LIKE "firewall%" | firewall blocks access | ✅️ |
firewall will block access | ✅️ | |
firewall blocking my access | ✅️ | |
firewall blocked her access | ✅️ | |
firewall did not block access | ✅️ | |
have the firewall block access | ||
firewall is not working | ✅️ | |
try blocking his access | ||
<field> LIKE "blocks" | firewall blocks access | |
firewall will block access | ||
firewall blocking my access | ||
firewall blocked her access | ||
firewall did not block access | ||
have the firewall block access | ||
firewall is not working | ||
try blocking his access | ||
<field> LIKE "%blocks%" | firewall blocks access | ✅️ |
firewall will block access | ||
firewall blocking my access | ||
firewall blocked her access | ||
firewall did not block access | ||
have the firewall block access | ||
firewall is not working | ||
try blocking his access |