Searching Your Database

The Readerware Main Window contains the search bar. This is always available and provides instant and easy access to the powerful search facilities built into Readerware.

To use the search bar simply select the type of search, Author, Title etc., fill in the search criteria and hit the Enter key or press the Search button. The search criteria is case insensitive and by default will return books that contain the search criteria anywhere in the field. For example, doing a title search for murder might return:

Murder with Mirrors
A Holiday for Murder
The A.B.C. Murders
Murderers Abroad
You can also use an asterisk as a wild card in your searches. For example if you want to search for books that begin with Murder, you could enter Murder*. Using the above list only the following would be returned:
Murder with Mirrors
Murderers Abroad
If you don't enter a value in the search field, Readerware will return all records with no data in the selected field. For example, select a Publisher search and press the Search button without entering a value. Readerware will return all books without a publisher.

The search results will be displayed in the main window using the currently selected view. You can then edit the data, display the detail view etc. Exactly how you do this will depend on the view type you selected. You can customize the views so you can display exactly the data you want, in the order you want.

Normally the search results are automatically refreshed when you update a book in your database. However this default behavior can be turned off using Database Preferences. Use the toolbar reload button, , to refresh the search results.

That is really all there is to it. A more detailed explanation of the various search types and options follow. At this point you might prefer to simply go and play.

The Default Search

Readerware allows you to define a default search. This has two uses, you can configure Readerware to run the default search whenever you start the program or open a new database. You can also run the default search at any time by clicking on the Default Search button, , in the toolbar. Initially the default search is set to search for all titles and display them by author. To define your own default search simply perform the search as normal and select Search->Save as Default Search from the menu bar. For example you could set the default search to display all unread titles or books in a specific category.

The Search Bar

You can search on virtually any field. As you select the different search types you will notice that the search criteria field will change. Sometimes you will type the search criteria in an entry field, for example an author search. Sometimes you can select from a list, for example a category search.

The search types are:


Wild Card Searches

Readerware uses the asterisk (*) as a wild card character, you can also use the SQL percent (%) character if you prefer. You can use the wildcard character in the Author, Title, All Fields, Publisher, Comments, Series, Category, Rating, Location, Format, User Number, LCCN, Dewey Decimal Number and user defined field searches. It can be placed anywhere in the search text. If you do not use the wild card characters in your search, Readerware assumes both leading and trailing wild card characters in text fields and an exact match in number fields.

For example:

Note that searches are case insensitive, "Murder" and "murder" are the same.

If you enter just an * in the search field, Readerware will return all books in the database.

If you enter just a % in the search field, Readerware will return all books that contain data in the selected field.

If you enter nothing in the search field, Readerware will return all books that do not contain data in the selected field.

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