Different Methods of Querying your Data

Queries allow you to perform simple or complex searches on your database and display the results. A Query is more powerful than a Find in that you can locate several entities at the same time using a much larger range of conditions.

For example, you can:

• Construct queries with specific entity types, link types, or a general Any entity type or Any link type.
• Restrict the fields that are searched by setting up one or more conditions on those fields.
• Output all the data found by the query or restrict output to specific entity or link types.
• Restrict the records that are queried to those in a set or found by a different query.
• Restrict the query to entities with a specific number of links.

• Use semantic types to search entity types, link types and fields which contain the same sort of data (in SQL server databases only)

The results of a query depend on the contents of the database or case at the time that you run the query; you may get different results each time you run a query. This is particularly relevant when using other features of iBase, such as when exporting or reporting the results of a query. If you need to save the results of a query, create a set that contains all the results.

You can also define queries that when run, prompt you to enter specific values to be used in the query. This enables you to set up standard queries that can be used with different values.

Once you have created a query, you can use scored matching to find entities and links and place them in order of relevance.

You can also query your data to find, for example, the lowest or earliest values.