Overview of the OmniFind Text Search Server for DB2 for i

OmniFind Text Search Server for DB2® for i provides a set of administrative stored procedures and two built-in functions: CONTAINS and SCORE. These functions are used to search text indexes created from documents stored in a DB2 table. The administrative stored procedures are used to enable and disable text searching and to create, update, and drop text indexes.

A text index can be created over any column of the following data types:
  • CHAR
  • VARCHAR
  • CLOB
  • BLOB
  • DBCLOB
  • GRAPHIC
  • VARGRAPHIC
  • BINARY
  • VARBINARY
  • XML
The data can contain plain text, HTML, XML, or many rich document types, such as PDF files. The data is read from the text column and is converted to Unicode (CCSID 1208) before it is indexed.

Text indexes are not typical DB2 indexes. They are not maintained automatically, cannot be journaled, and cannot be backed up using the typical backup and restore methods. Text indexes are created and stored on a text search server.

By default, the text search server is created on the same system as the data stored in the DB2 database. However, a text search server can be created on another server running IBM® i, Linux, UNIX, AIX®, or Windows.

The text search server contains a collection of significant terms extracted from each row of the column. A TCP/IP connection is used to communicate with the text search server.

The CONTAINS and SCORE functions are built-in functions which are integrated into DB2 for i.

DB2 for i uses the OmniFind(r) Text Search Server as an indexing and search engine for documents that are stored in a DB2 database.

OMNIFIND supports multiple collections. A collection contains one text search index and the index-specific options for parsing, indexing, and searching.

OMNIFIND has a graphical user interface for administration of servers and text indexes.

The text search server also provides SQL stored procedures and command-line tools that you can use for common tasks. These common tasks include configuring and administering the text search server, creating a synonym dictionary for a collection, and diagnosing problems.