- Wild cards can be used in a query to represent one or more characters. ProTrack uses two Wild cards, the * (asterisk) and the ? (question mark). The * is used to represent one or more characters and the ? represents a single character. If we were searching for the movie “Gone With the Wind” rather than type the entire title in the Title I field we could simply type GONE*WIND and we’d find “Gone With the Wind”. GONE*WIND actually says find a program that begins withe the characters G-O-N-E and ends with W-I-N-D. It doesn’t matter what is in the middle. If we were searching for the show “A discussion about Gone With the Wind” we wouldn’t find it with our original search. If we changed the search criteria to *GONE*WIND then we would find “A discussion about Gone With the Wind”. A * may be placed before or after group of characters and more than one * may be used in a search. For example when searching for “The Postman Always Rings Twice” we could use the criteria *POST*RING*TWICE*.
- In addition to Wild cards ProTrack also allows for Comparative Operators for numbers and dates. These operators include greater than, less than, equal to, not equal to, a range and a list.
- Greater Than and Less Than (>, <) may be used in date or numeric fields. For example placing >101 in the #: field would find all programs with a program # greater than 101 (102 and higher).
- Equal to and Not Equal to (=, !=) may be used on date or numeric fields. For example placing =101 (or simply 101) in the program number field will locate programs with the number 101. Place !=101 will locate any number but 101.
- It is possible to combine = and greater than, less than. For example you can look for numbers >=107, this will find numbers greater than or equal to 107. You may also look for numbers !>107 (not greater than 107) this is the same as <=106.
- ProTrack allows you to look for a range of numbers or dates (use :). For example if you want to find usage ending dates during the month of July 2009 you could enter 070109:073109 in the End Usage date. You are say to ProTrack “find dates between July 1, 2009 and July 31, 22009”. This includes the starting and ending date.
- ProTrack allows you to construct a list. For example, if you wanted to just see episodes 101, 109 and 141 you could enter into the # field 101|109|141. (The symbol | is called a “pipe symbol”)
- In addition to the use of Wild cards and Comparative Operators ProTrack allow you to query on multiple fields at the same time. For example you could place “SESAM*STREET*” in the Title field and >1400 in the # field if you were looking for episodes of Sesame Street greater than 1400. For fields that are pull downs you can select a value when querying. By using wild cards, comparative operators and the ability to query on multiple fields it is easy to locate the exact information you are interested in looking at.
| Symbol | Meaning | Pattern |
| Comparative Operators: Use with any alpha-numeric characters | ||
| = | Is Null | =value |
| == | Equal to | ==value |
| > | Greater than | >value |
| >= | Greater than or equal to | >=value |
| < | Less than | <value |
| <= | Less than or equal to | <=value |
| <> or != | Not equal to | <>value, !=value |
| : or .. | Range | value1:value2, ..value1..value2 |
| Wildcards: Use with alpha characters only | ||
| * | Wildcard for any string of characters | *x, x*, *x* |
| ? | Wildcard for a single character | ?x, x?, ?x?, x?? |
| [c] | A set of characters | [a-z]*, [xy]? |