Six Power-User Tips for Searching My Oracle Support

[Editor: This article from Robert Farrington contains some excellent generic tips for searching My Oracle Support, but please remember that concerns or questions about My Oracle Support should be logged as Service Requests; this blog is intended to help EBS DBAs with technical EBS topics, not to troubleshoot MOS issues.] The My Oracle Support (MOS) knowledge base contains a plethora of information about all of Oracle's products. However, it is not always easy to know how best to locate what you need to solve a problem or make a decision.   

This article provides six tips to help you find what you're looking for. All except the last apply to both the main (Flash-based) site at support.oracle.com, and the HTML-based site at supporthtml.oracle.com. TIP 1: Remember that search terms are ANDed The key point to remember is that search terms you enter are all joined by a logical AND before the search is performed. So it is essential to choose the terms (and their number) carefully. Too few will result in a search that is not selective enough, and will return irrelevant results. On the other hand, too many terms will result in a search that is too restrictive, and which may exclude documents that would have met your needs. TIP 2: Understand how the standard search criteria work When performing a search, knowledge of the following search criteria and options may prove useful, particularly if a simple search does not yield any useful results. (The bold italics are used solely for emphasis in this article.)  

• All searches are case-insensitive. For example: TNS and tns are considered to be the same. So you might as well use lower case.
• Because all search terms are joined with logical AND for processing, tns listener will look for documents that contain both tns and listener.

TIP 3: Use Advanced Searches to narrow the scope By default, My Oracle Support performs a simple search. You can perform an advanced search by choosing Advanced Search from the Sources dropdown menu to the left of the Search Knowledge Base box at the top right of the screen:  

Or you can simply click on the Advanced link at the end of the same line, to open an Advanced Search popup window:  

TIP 4: Use special Advanced Search options As an alternative to using the Advanced Search window shown above, you can enter advanced options with your search terms:

• Use OR by separating the search terms with a vertical bar (same as the UNIX pipe character, but in MOS you must have a space either side of the character). For example: tns | listener will look for documents that contain either tns or listener.
• Enclose a search phrase in quotes to find exact matches only. For example: "tns listener"
• Exclude words with a dash (hyphen), with no space after the dash. For example: tns -listener
• Do not use the plus (+) character to force a term to be included in the results (for example, tns +listener), because (as already stated) an AND search is performed by default.
• Group words with (term1 | term2) term3. For example, (adstrtal.sh | adstpall.sh) autoconfigfinds documents about AutoConfig that also mention either adstrtal.sh or adstpall.sh.

TIP 5:  Understand the hidden search assumptions

• Search uses stemming - that is, if you search for start, documents with starting will also be returned. However, greater weight is placed on an exact match.
• For searches that use multiple terms, proximity is important: the terms must not be separated by more than 100 words. For example, script start application tier services will return all documents containing these five words, provided they are not separated by more than 100 words.
• The asterisk (*) can be used as a wildcard character, but not at the beginning of a search term.

TIP 6: Use PowerView The final power user tip is to use PowerView, which allows you to limit your search to a product of your choice. Note that this option is only available with the main (Flash-based) site, not the HTML-based one. To use this option, you first need to create a new PowerView:  

In the following example, Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite is being specified as the product of interest:  

You can then switch PowerView on, and the status will change accordingly: