Advanced Search Overview

The Advanced Search feature in Blindata provides multiple search modes to help you find and understand your data assets more effectively. This search system combines traditional search capabilities with AI-powered features to deliver relevant results based on your specific needs.

Search Modes

Blindata’s advanced search system offers four different search modes, each designed for different types of searches:

Normal Search (Default)

The Normal Search mode provides exact match search functionality in Blindata. This mode finds results only when your search query exactly matches the resource name (or part of).

Example Search:

• Query: “customer_data_product”
• Resource Types: Data Products, Business Terms
• Results: Only resources that contain “customer_data_product” exactly in their name or description

Full-Text Search (FTS)

The Full-Text Search (FTS) mode offers enhanced keyword search capabilities with intelligent query processing. This mode can handle spelling variations and typos, making it more forgiving if you’re not sure of the exact spelling of terms.

FTS can understand common search patterns like phrase matching. It’s ideal for general keyword searches where you want to find resources containing specific terms or phrases.

Example Searches:

• Query: “custmer data” (typo)
• Results: Finds “customer data” resources despite the spelling error

Semantic Search

The Semantic Search mode uses AI to understand the meaning and context of your search queries, not just the keywords. This mode can find resources that are conceptually related to your search, even if they don’t contain the exact terms you used.

Semantic Search supports multiple languages, allowing you to search in your preferred language while finding resources that may be described in different languages. The AI understands the semantic meaning across languages, making it even more useful for international organizations.

For example, if you search for “customer data quality,” semantic search might return resources about data validation rules, customer information management, and quality assessment frameworks, even if those exact words aren’t in the resource descriptions.

This mode is particularly useful when you want to discover related concepts or when you’re not sure of the exact terminology used in your organization.

Example Searches:

• Query: “data reliability”
• Results: Data quality rules, validation frameworks, monitoring dashboards, data governance policies

Hybrid Search

The Hybrid Search mode combines the strengths of both Full-Text Search and Semantic Search. It provides the precision of keyword matching along with the contextual understanding of semantic search.

Hybrid Search is most effective for complex queries where you want comprehensive results. It might return both exact matches and conceptually related resources, giving you a broader view of what’s available in your data ecosystem.

Example Search:

• Query: “data lineage tracking”
• Exact Matches: Resources with “data lineage” or “tracking” in the name/description
• Conceptual Matches: Data flow diagrams, impact analysis tools, dependency mapping
• Combined Results: Ranked by relevance combining both approaches

What You Can Search

The advanced search system works across all types of resources in Blindata, including:

• Data Products: Search for data products by name, description, or conceptual similarity
• Business Terms: Find business glossary terms and definitions
• Quality Rules: Discover data quality rules and validation criteria
• Data Flows: Locate data lineage and flow information
• Reports and Dashboards: Find analytical artifacts and visualizations
• Technical Assets: Search for databases, tables, and technical metadata

Configuration Requirements

This feature is currently under development. Please contact your Blindata administrator for more information about availability and configuration requirements.