In-Depth

January Response Time

• 01/01/2000

I find it humorous that the "Facts of Life" made it into the recent ESJ issue (October, page 88). What makes it sort of ironic is that this is one of those items that has been circulating the Internet via e-mail for some time now. It is actually a part of the types of e-mail of which it is purporting to make fun.

Also, it is somewhat ironic that this one has crossed the lines from e-mail to snail mail and was distributed through a different delivery vehicle to your readership. I suspect that this "crossover" from the virtual world to the real world is something that very few of the e-mail chain letters actually accomplish.

Looking forward to the next issue, as always.

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Thanks to your ESJ editorial staff for helping me locate the middleware article by John Harney that ran in your magazine [in March, page 53]. The information was very helpful. Your publication has such a vast amount of great information. I used a whole stack of paper printing off articles for myself and my coworkers.

• Look for a phrase. (e.g., type "sports events" to find the exact phrase sports events. Since the search is not case-sensitive, this is equivalent to "Sports Events.")

• Look for two or more words at once by using the AND operator. (e.g., type sports AND events to find documents that have both the word sports and the word events anywhere.)

• Look for words that are close to each other by using the NEAR operator instead of the AND operator. When you use NEAR, the closer together the words are, the higher the rank of the page, so the higher it appears in the list of search results. (e.g., type sports NEAR events to match documents where the word sports is within 50 words of the word events.)

• Look for synonyms or similar words by using the OR operator. Note that if you don’t use the OR operator and search using multiple words, the words are treated as a phrase) (e.g., type dogs OR puppies to find the word dogs or the word puppies, but not necessarily both.)

• Limit your search by using the AND NOT operator to exclude words. (e.g., type surfing AND NOT the Internet to find all instances of surfing, as long as surfing is not followed by the phrase the Internet.)

• Use quotes if you want to use AND, OR, NOT, or NEAR literally. (e.g., type "houses near parks" to find documents with the phrase houses near parks. Without the quotes, this query would use the NEAR operator instead of the phrase.)

• Use a single asterisk (*) to look for words that begin with the same letters. (e.g., type "key*" to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.)

• Use a double asterisk (**) to look for all forms of a word. (e.g., type "fly**" to match fly, flew, flown, and flying.)

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In the [November "Web-to-Host Connections," page 20] column by Joe McKendrick … entitled "Proactive Destruction: One Bank’s Story" … [the] Aviva Web-to-Host and Aviva for Java Servers from Eicon Corp. should be Aviva Web-to-Host Server and Aviva for Java from Eicon Technology Corporation, respectively.