Metatags That Contain a Period Cause Query to be Case Sensitive (238848)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Site Server 3.0

This article was previously published under Q238848

SYMPTOMS

If a source document contains a metatag with a period (for example meta name="term" content="Holder v. Hall"), when you run the query, the query becomes case sensitive. The following queries fail to find the document with the aforementioned example metatag:
  • @META_term Holder V. Hall

    This query fails because the character before the period changes its capitalization (from v to V).
  • @META_term Holder v. hall

    This query fails because the character after the period changes its capitalization (from H to h) and there are no changes after that.

CAUSE

The period (.) is a wildcard in queries and is being treated as it should. When you query a column, a period in a query means that the query must be an exact match of the string.

RESOLUTION

The simplest way to resolve this problem is to do a "free text" query. To specify a free text query, the column name should be prefixed by a dollar sign ($) rather than @. For example:

$META_Name holder v. hall


This is interpreted as "holder" AND "v" AND "hall."

WORKAROUND

If you do not want to do a "free text" query, you can change the period to a question mark (?), as follows:

@META_term holder v? hall


This produces a query that is not case sensitive .

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:5/8/2002
Keywords:kbbug KB238848