Need help with date range searches for Table Sources in SES

Question

Hi all,
I need help, please. I am trying to satisfy a Level 1 client requirement for the ability to search for records in crawled table sources by a date and/or date range. I have performed the following steps, and did not get accurate results from Advanced searching for date. Please help me understand what I am doing wrong, and/or if there is a way to define a date search attribute without creating a LOV for a date column. (My tables have 500,00 rows.)
I am using SES 10.1.8.3 on Windows 32.
My Oracle 10g Spatial Table is called REPORTS and this table has the following columns:
TRACKNUM Varchar2
TITLE Varchar2
SUMMARY CLOB
SYMBOLCODE Varchar2
Timestamp Date
OBSDATE Date
GEOM SDO_GEOMETRY
I set up the REPORTS table source in SES, using TRACKNUM as the Primary Key (unique and not null), and SUMMARY as the CONTENT Column. In the Table Column Mappings I defined TITLE as String and TITLE.
Under Global Settings > Search Attributes I defined a new Search Attribute (type Date) called DATE OCCURRED (DD-MON-YY).
Went back to REPORTS source previously defined and added a new Table Column Mapping - mapping OBSDATE to the newly defined DATE OCCURRED (DD-MON-YY) search attribute.
I then modified the Schedule for the REPORTS source Crawler Policy to “Process All Documents”.
Schedule crawls and indexes entire REPORTS table.
In SES Advanced Search page, I enter my search keyword, select Specific Source Group as REPORTS, select All Match, and used the pick list to select the DATE OCCURRED (DD-MON-YY) Attribute Name, operator of Greater than equal, and entered the Value 01-JAN-07. Then the second attribute name of DATE_OCCURRED (DD-MON-YY), less than equals, 10-JAN-07.
Search results gave me 38,000 documents, and the first 25 I looked at had dates NOT within the 01-JAN-07 / 10-JAN-07 range. (e.g. OBSDATE= 10-MAR-07, 22-SEP-07, 02-FEB-08, etc.)
And, none of the results I opened had ANY dates within the SUMMARY CLOB…in case that’s what was being found in the search.
Can someone help me figure out how to allow my client to search for specific dated records in a db table using a single column for the date? This is a major requirement and they are anxiously awaiting my solution.
Thanks very much, in advance….

Answer 1

raford,
Thanks very much for your reply. However, from what I've read in the SES Admin Document is that (I think) the date format DD/MM/YYYY pertains only to searches on "file system" sources (e.g. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, etc.). We have 3 file system sources among our 25 total sources. The remaining 22 sources are all TABLE or DATABASE sources. The DBA here has done a great job getting the data standardized using the typical/default Oracle DATE type format in our TABLE sources (DD-MON-YY). Our tables have anywhere from 1500 rows to 2 million rows.
I tested your theory that the dates we are entering are being changed to Strings behind the scenes and on the Advanced Page, searched for results using OBSDATE equals 01/02/2007 in an attempt to find data that I know for certain to be in the mapped OBSDATE table column as 01-FEB-07. My result set contained data that had an OBSDATE of 03-MAR-07 and none containing 01-FEB-07.
Here is the big issue...in order for my client to fulfill his primary mission, one of the top 5 requirements is that he/she be able to find specific table rows that are contain a specific date or range of dates.
thanks very much!