Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : March/April 2004

Dialog KnowledgeBase Database Offers Free Reference Search Tool

Dialog KnowledgeBase is now available as a free reference tool for all Dialog customers. Produced by Knowledge Center staff in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, the database provides an increasing number of answers to frequently-asked-questions about the Dialog family of products and services including Dialog DataStar, Dialog Profound, Dialog NewsEdge and Dialog Intelligence Data. Search KnowledgeBase for easy access to product information, search tips and training materials.

Originally developed for internal use by Knowledge Center specialists, this new file is now available at no cost to you, complementing other value-added files, such as DIALINDEX® (File 411), Dialog Bluesheets (File 415) and the Dialog Finder Files including Dialog Product Name Finder^™ (File 413), Dialog Journal Name Finder^™ (File 414) and Dialog Company Name Finder^™ (File 416).

Dialog KnowledgeBase is designed to help users quickly find answers to such questions as:

• How can I locate a list of the top pharmaceutical drugs?
  
  
• How can I find a list of patent country codes?
  
  
• How does the Dialog ERA^SM Redistribution/Archive feature work?
  
  
• How can I convert tabular output data to Microsoft® Excel format?
  
  
• How can I get a list of journals indexed in a file?

Searchers may access Dialog KnowledgeBase by using a specially developed search form available at support.dialog.com using traditional commands. The search form enables searching by topics or by keywords with the option to limit the search by Market Sector, Product or File Number.

KnowledgeBase is available on the Dialog service as File 418. Using Dialog command language, searchers can retrieve the fulltext of entries by keyword or limit the search to the Title (/TI), Lead Paragraph (/LP) or Descriptor (/DE) fields. Users may also search by File Number (FI=) or Source (SO=), and results can be SORTed or RANKed by Title, File Number or Publication Date.

Topic: Search by file name or file number (FI=) to locate information about MEDLINE on Dialog or Dialog DataStar.

?b 418
?s medline/ti,lp or fi=(155 or medl)
?t s1/6/1

The following example shows the entire search and the results from the KnowledgeBase database.

?b 418
        
File 418:KnowledgeBase  2004/Jan B1
       (c) 2004 Dialog
 
      Set  Items  Description
      ---  -----  -----------
?s medline/ti,lp or fi=(155 or medl)
               7  MEDLINE/TI,LP
               7  FI=155
               3  FI=MEDL
      S1       9  MEDLINE/TI,LP OR FI=(155 OR MEDL)

?t s1/6/1

 1/6/1
0006000712
Pre-Exploded Terms in  Medline  (Files 154, 155)
April 16, 2003
 
?t 1/9/1

 1/9/1
DIALOG(R)File 418:KnowledgeBase
(c) 2004 Dialog. All rts. reserv.

0006000712
Pre-Exploded Terms in Medline (Files 154, 155)
April 16, 2003

Dialog

Pre-explodes are large categories of narrower terms 
(usually 100 or more) that are used together in 
searches.  These large categories have been 
pre-exploded to speed up processing when searching.  
In the MeSH thesaurus, these categories have a large 
black dot in front of the descriptor.  These same 
categories have been pre-exploded on Dialog. 
Pre-exploded categories can be searched with an 
exclamation mark (S NEOPLASMS!), but processing 
is faster if the descriptor code is used with only 
an ending period (S DC=C4.).

FILES: 154, 155
DESCRIPTORS: BIOMEDICAL; FILE SPECIFIC SEARCH TIPS
AREA: Science Search Related
SOURCE:  Medline FAQs 
     (http://support.dialog.com/faq/medline.shtml);
Rogers Hannah, Subject Specialist
AVAILABILITY: external

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