Searching the database
The 'Search database' page allows you to search by combinations of criteria. These can be linked together by 'and' or 'or'. You can alter the number of selection criteria combinations that can be combined by going to the options page (up to 10 can be used). On some databases, you can also choose to search by clonal complex - click the 'Search by clonal complex' check box and select the required complex in the drop-down list. If you leave all the other fields blank, all STs belonging to the chosen complex will be returned, otherwise the search will be narrowed to those STs that match the complex and the other criteria. Some databases may have other drop-down lists as the database administrator can select which fields to enable these for.
You can query each field using the following modifiers:
| Modifier | Description |
|---|---|
| = | Case insensitive exact match |
| contains | Case insensitive match to a partial string, e.g. searching for clonal complex 'contains' st-11 would return all STs belonging to the ST-11 complex |
| > | Greater than |
| < | Less than |
| NOT | Match to values that do not equal the search term (case insensitive) |
| NOT contain | Match to values that do not contain the search term (case insensitive), e.g. searching for clonal complex 'NOT contain' lactamica would return all STs that do not belong to a clonal complex that has 'lactamica' in the name. |
If the database stores full allelic profiles (rather than ST numbers), an additional drop-down list will be displayed that allows you to select whether to display isolates whose profiles are 'not started', 'started', or 'finished'.
To display all the isolates in the database, you can choose to search for something that would be true for everything, e.g. 'id>0'.
To view further information about any of the returned isolates, click on the hyperlinked id number in the table.
