Preface

This manual provides reference information for Oracle Text. Use it as a reference for creating Oracle Text indexes, for issuing Oracle Text queries, for presenting documents, and for using the Oracle Text PL/SQL packages.

This preface contains these topics:

• Audience

• Documentation Accessibility

• Structure

• Related Documentation

• Conventions

Audience

Oracle Text Reference is intended for an Oracle Text application developer or a system administrator responsible for maintaining the Oracle Text system.

To use this document, you need experience with the Oracle relational database management system, SQL, SQL*Plus, and PL/SQL. See the documentation provided with your hardware and software for additional information.

If you are unfamiliar with the Oracle RDBMS and related tools, see the Oracle Database Concepts, which is a comprehensive introduction to the concepts and terminology used throughout Oracle documentation.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Structure

This document contains:

Chapter 1, "Oracle Text SQL Statements and Operators"

This chapter describes the SQL statements and operators you can use with Oracle Text.

Chapter 2, " Oracle Text Indexing Elements"

This chapter describes the indexing types you can use to create an Oracle Text index.

Chapter 3, "Oracle Text CONTAINS Query Operators"

This chapter describes the operators you can use in CONTAINS queries.

Chapter 4, " Special Characters in Oracle Text Queries"

This chapter describes the special characters you can use in CONTAINS queries.

Chapter 5, "CTX_ADM Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_ADM PL/SQL package.

Chapter 6, "CTX_CLS Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_CLS PL/SQL package.

Chapter 7, "CTX_DDL Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_DDL PL/SQL package. Use this package for maintaining your index.

Chapter 8, " CTX_DOC Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_DOC PL/SQL package. Use this package for document services such as document presentation.

Chapter 9, "CTX_OUTPUT Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_OUTPUT PL/SQL package. Use this package to manage your index error log files.

Chapter 10, "CTX_QUERY Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_QUERY PL/SQL package. Use this package to manage queries such as to count hits and to generate query explain plan information.

Chapter 11, "CTX_REPORT"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_REPORT PL/SQL package. Use this package to create various index reports.

Chapter 12, "CTX_THES Package"

This chapter describes the procedures in the CTX_THES PL/SQL package. Use this package to manage your thesaurus.

Chapter 13, "CTX_ULEXER Package"

This chapter describes the data types in the CTX_ULEXER PL/SQL package. Use this package with the user defined lexer.

Chapter 14, "Oracle Text Executables"

This chapter describes the supplied executables for Oracle Text including ctxload, the thesaurus loading program, and ctxkbtc, the knowledge base compiler.

Chapter 15, "Oracle Text Alternative Spelling"

This chapter describes how to handle terms that have multiple spellings, and it lists the alternate spelling conventions used for German, Danish, and Swedish.

Appendix A, "Oracle Text Result Tables"

This appendix describes the result tables for some of the procedures in CTX_DOC, CTX_QUERY, and CTX_THES packages.

Appendix B, "Oracle Text Supported Document Formats"

This appendix describes the supported document formats that can be filtered with the AUTO_FILTER filter for indexing.

Appendix C, "Text Loading Examples for Oracle Text"

This appendix provides some basic examples for populating a text table.

Chapter D, "Oracle Text Multilingual Features"

This appendix describes the multilingual features of Oracle Text.

Appendix E, "Oracle Text Supplied Stoplists"

This appendix describes the supplied stoplist for each supported language.

Appendix F, " The Oracle Text Scoring Algorithm"

This appendix describes the scoring algorithm used for word queries.

Appendix G, "Oracle Text Views"

This appendix describes the Oracle Text views.

Appendix H, " Stopword Transformations in Oracle Text"

This appendix describes stopword transformations.

Related Documentation

For more information, see these Oracle resources:

For more information about Oracle Text, see:

• Oracle Text Application Developer's Guide

For more information about Oracle Database, see:

• Oracle Database Concepts

• Oracle Database Administrator's Guide

• Oracle Database Utilities

• Oracle Database Performance Tuning Guide

• Oracle Database SQL Reference

• Oracle Database Reference

• Oracle Database Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals

For more information about PL/SQL, see:

• Oracle Database PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference

You can obtain Oracle Text technical information, collateral, code samples, training slides and other material at:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/text/

Many books in the documentation set use the sample schemas of the seed database, which is installed by default when you install Oracle Database. Refer to Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information on how these schemas were created and how you can use them yourself.

Printed documentation is available for sale in the Oracle Store at

http://oraclestore.oracle.com/

To download free release notes, installation documentation, white papers, or other collateral, please visit the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You must register online before using OTN; registration is free and can be done at

http://www.oracle.com/technology/membership/

If you already have a username and password for OTN, then you can go directly to the documentation section of the OTN Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

• Conventions in Text

• Conventions in Code Examples

• Conventions for Windows Operating Systems

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

[ ]

DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])

{ }

{ENABLE | DISABLE}

|

{ENABLE | DISABLE}
[COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]

...

CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery;

SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;

acctbal NUMBER(11,2);
acct    CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;

Italics

CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password
DB_NAME = database_name

UPPERCASE

SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;
DROP TABLE hr.employees;

lowercase

SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
sqlplus hr/hr
CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

Conventions for Windows Operating Systems

The following table describes conventions for Windows operating systems and provides examples of their use.

C:\oracle\oradata>

C:\>exp HR/HR TABLES=employees
QUERY=\"WHERE job_id='SA_REP' and
salary<8000\"

HOME_NAME

C:\> net start OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener