Lesson 7: Wrapping up the Course

Congratulations! You have completed Introduction to Dialog Basics for the Engineering Professional. Here are a few tips to continue your Dialog education.

We hope that you have enjoyed working through the course in your own time. Remember that the practice that you do will reinforce your learning in the course.

Here are a few tips to continue your Dialog education.

Review of the Commands and Techniques

In this course, you have learned how to use the databases selection tool, called DIALINDEX, to choose databases, the basic Dialog commands, how to identify key terms, and choose synonyms.

In addition, you have learned to truncate, use proximity connectors and logical operators. Print this page (or download a PDF version) so that you have a list of the commands and techniques you learned all on one page:

Basic Commands

Command	Example	When to Use It
BEGIN B	begin 2 b 2 b 2,8 current b compsci	Use BEGIN with a file number to specify the database(s) to be searched. Use CURRENT to restrict a search to the current year plus previous year in the database specified.
EXPAND E	expand au=rodrigues e jn=IEEE transactions	Use EXPAND to verify the spelling of terms and to view similar entries.
SELECT S	select telecommut? s telecommut? s internet? or intranet? s s1 and s2	Use SELECT to create a set of records (e.g., s1) that contains the specified terms.
DISPLAY SETS DS	display sets ds	Use DISPLAY SETS to display a list of all sets created since the last BEGIN command.
TYPE T	type s1/6/1-3 t s2/8/1 t s3/3/1,2	Use TYPE to display search results in a specified format.
LOGOFF	logoff	Use LOGOFF to end the search and disconnect from the Dialog system.

Other Dialog Techniques

Technique	Examples
Using truncation	s communicat?
Using proximity connectors	s fiber?(n)optic? s computer(w)simulation s glass?(3n)fiber? s solar(s)heat?
Using logical operators	s computer? and printer? s internet? or intranet?

Go to the next page.

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