SUPPORT Q&A - Global Search?

Ron - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 1:28 PM:

I just noticaed that there is no global search within Innovator. Is there a way to preform a global search for an item with out first selecting the type of item such as document, part or ECR etc.

If I have a number, but do not know if this is a document or a part or a specification, is there a way to run a search which will cover all items?

Ron

RobMcAveney - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 2:11 PM:

Hi Ron -

You are correct that there is no truly "global" search.  Because Innovator is self-describing, this would involve searching every table in the database, including all the ItemTypes, Forms, etc.  Performance would obviously be a problem with that.  One way to achieve what you're looking for is to create a new ItemType of implementation type Poly Item, with Poly Sources for each of the ItemTypes to include in the search.  You would then create properties on the PolyItem for each of the shared properties (like item_number, name, etc.).  Once this is done, users would be able to search across those properties on the included ItemTypes.

Hope that helps -

Rob
 

Ron - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 2:59 PM:

Hi Rob

Thanks, yes this will do what I needed and is is very simple to create. I was amazed how quickly I was able to create a simple search feature, I used Description and ID number and at first I was unable to save the new itemtype “Global Search” but once I seen that I had identified each item type with a different name for the ID number, one I called “doc_num” another I called document_number and yet another i called id_number. I converted all items to have the same name for the number “id_number” I was able to save the new itemtype and it worked great.

Thanks for the quick reply

 Ron