JNews Queries

JNews Querries are a class of query techniques used when your workstation is accessing the Aspen Graphics via JACC.

JNews queries provide a simple, intuitive and powerful query language. The query conventions described below are very similar to the advanced search capabilities provided by common web search engines.

All searches are case insensitive. In other words, a search for CORN, corn and CoRn will all return the same result. All searches match whole words (unless the wild card asterisk (*) is used at the end of the word).

The JNews database is configured to keep a minimum word length for searches. JNews equipped with a minimum word length of 3 for keywords and headline words and 1 for symbols.

The JNews database has a list of common words that it ignores (typically articles and other grammatical glue). These will not be found in a search unless they are part of a phrase. This mitigates query results that are "too common." Any word that appears in more than 50% of the records will not be found by the search.

Due to the ignore list in the JNews database engine, JNews databases requires some initial burn-in time.

Currently, all JNews queries search both headlines and keywords. This may change in the future.

JNews queries are able to distinguish text from instrument symbols. Symbols must be enclosed within braces ([ ]). For example [ T ] will search for the stock symbol for AT&T. Symbol searches support all the basic operators below, and can be intermixed with keyword/headline search phrases.

The JNews database assumes that words are separated by non alpha-numeric characters. That said, there are certain characters that can never serve as a separator. They are:

Character
#	pound sign
$	dollar sign
%	percent sign
&	ampersand
’	apostrophe
.	period
/	front slash
:	colon
=	equal sign
_	underscore

This class of characters enables you to build strings like "S&P" or "US.V".

Basic Operators

Operator	Function
+corn	A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each news headline or keyword. (This is supported by Google advanced search).
-corn	A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in each news headline or keyword. (This is supported by Google advanced search).
"sweet corn"	If a phrase is enclosed in double quotes, only news headlines or keywords that match the phrase literally, as it was typed will be returned. (This is supported by Google advanced search).
corn*	An wild card comes at the end of the word it modifies. It works like a wild card matching any words that start with the specified string.
()	Use parentheses to group subexpressions

Relevance Operators

Operator

Function

Relevance. These 2 operators change a word’s contribution to the relevance value assigned to the search. The < operator decreases the contribution, and the > operator increases the contribution.

Negation. This inverts the words relevance. It is useful for removing words that are very common, thus get high relevance, but it doesn’t completely remove them from the search.

Examples

Example	Meaning
crude light oil.	At least one of these words
+crude +light +oil	All words
crud*	Any word that starts with “crud”, crud, crude, crudely
“brent crude oil”	‘brent crude oil prices today”, but not “brent oil crude”
+brent crude	Must contain the word brent, but rank it higher if it also contains the word crude
+brent +(>crude <oil)	brent and crude and brent and oil, but rank brent crude higher than brent oil
[+t –ibm]	Must contain stock symbol for AT&T, but can’t contain stock symbol for IBM.
[+t] -ibm	Must contain stock symbol for AT&T, but can’t contain IBM in the keywords or headline.

Multi-word queries that employ operators must be padded with spaces. A query +corn-soybeans will not work.