Searching for IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository Objects

You can search for objects by name, type, version, date range, or other criteria such as keywords, or data dictionary information (for IBM® SPSS® Statistics data files) such as variable names or value labels.

From the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository Retrieve dialog box:

  1. Click the Search tab.
  2. Select the type of search (Search all fields or Restrict search) and specify search terms, such as the name of the object or the author.
  3. Specify whether to restrict the search to objects that match all search terms (Must contain ALL of the terms), or whether results will include objects matching any of the specified terms (Contains ANY of the terms).
  4. Click Search.
  5. Select one or more of the search results in the right pane and click Retrieve.

Note: If the Retrieve dialog was accessed from a statistical procedure (rather than a File Open dialog), only a single result can be selected.

Optionally, you can:

  • Click Paste to paste the command syntax required to open the files(s).

Specifying Search Criteria

Search all fields. Searches the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository for objects that match some or all of the specified terms, depending on which of Contains ANY of the terms or Must contain ALL of the terms is selected. All fields such as Author, Label, and Keywords are included in the search (see Restrict search below for a listing of fields). For command syntax (.sps) files, the search includes the content of the files. For IBM SPSS Statistics data files, the search includes variable names, variable labels, value labels, and names and values of custom variable attributes. Specifying an asterisk (*) will return all objects.

Restrict search. Used to limit the search to a specified set of fields; for instance, Author and Title. The results of the search include objects that match some or all of the specified fields, depending on which of Contains ANY of the terms or Must contain ALL of the terms is selected.

  • Object Types. Used to restrict the set of file types included in a search. Check the file types to be included in the search.
  • Title. Used to search by name.
  • Label. Used to search by version label. The Label drop-down list includes the version labels in the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository that are accessible by the current user. The label LATEST (if available) refers to the most recent version of an object. Multiple labels may be selected.
  • Dates. Used to restrict the search to IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository objects last modified within a specified date range. The three range choices are: On or Before, On or After, and Between. Selecting Between enables a second date field, and the resulting search includes the start and end dates of the range.
  • Author. Used to search by the login name of the author.
  • Keywords. Used to search by one or more of the keywords specified when an object was stored to the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository. You can specify multiple search terms, although each term is treated separately (see Notes section). For multi-word keywords, a match occurs if at least one of the words is specified as a search term (in the Keywords text box). For example, specifying "churn", "analysis", or "churn analysis", will match objects with the keyword "churn analysis".
  • Indexed Content. Used to search the dictionary of IBM SPSS Statistics data (.sav) files . The search includes variable names, variable labels, value labels, and names and values of custom variable attributes. You can specify multiple search terms, although each term is treated separately (see Notes section).
  • Description. Used to search by the description provided when an object was stored to the IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services Repository. You can specify multiple search terms, although each term is treated separately (see Notes section).

Contains ANY of the terms. Specifies that the search returns objects that match any of the specified terms. For example, selecting Restrict search and specifying Author = "Fred" and Keywords = "credit" searches for objects with either "Fred" as the author or "credit" as one of the keywords.

Must contain ALL of the terms. Specifies that the search only returns objects that match all of the specified terms. For example, selecting Restrict search and specifying Title = "credit_risk_analysis" and Label = "production" returns objects named "credit_risk_analysis" that have a label of "production".

Notes

  • All searches are case-insensitive.
  • Matching of an exact phrase is not supported. Each specified search term is treated separately. For example, specifying "churn testbed" in the Search all fields text box and with Must contain ALL of the terms selected, returns objects that match both "churn" and "testbed", irrespective of whether the matches occur in the same field.
  • In addition to the specified search terms, the search will match objects that contain the roots of those terms. For example, the search term 'fishing' will match 'fish', 'fisher', and 'fished', in addition to 'fishing'. This functionality is only provided for English.

Terms Not Included in a Search

Stopwords are excluded from searches. The words in the following alphabetical list are not indexed: 

a, all, am, an, and, any, are, as, at, be, but, by, can, could, did, do, 
does, etc, for, from, goes, got, had, has, have, he, her, him, his, how, 
if, in, is, it, let, me, more, much, must, my, nor, not, now, of, off, 
on, or, our, own, see, set, shall, she, should, so, some, than, that, 
the, them, then, there, these, this, those, though, to, too, us, was, 
way, we, what, when, where, which, who, why, will, would, yes, yet, you

As a result, the system ignores them when searching for items. Currently, you cannot modify the terms in this list.