API Management 10.4 | Using CentraSite | Asset Management | Managing Assets through CentraSite Business UI | Searching and Browsing the Asset Catalog
 
Searching and Browsing the Asset Catalog
The set of assets available to you when you search or browse the asset catalog are the assets on which you have the View permission. You can obtain View permission on an asset in the following ways:
*By belonging to a role that includes any of the following permissions.
This permission...
Allows you to...
View Assets
View all assets within a specified organization.
Modify Assets
View and edit all assets within a specified organization.
Manage Assets
View, edit, and delete all assets within a specified organization, and set instance-level permissions on those assets. This permission also allows you to create assets.
Create Assets
Add new assets to a specified organization. You automatically receive Full permission (which implies Modify and View permission) on all assets that you create.
*By having View, Modify, or Full instance-level permissions on an asset.
By default, all CentraSite users belong to the Asset Consumer role. This role includes the View Assets permission for the organization to which a user belongs.
Having the Asset Consumer role gives you implicit view permission on all the assets in your organization. You can view assets from other organizations only if you are given permission to do so through the assignment of additional role-based or instance-level permissions.
Note: In rare instances, an administrator might not grant view permissions to all of the users in an organization. If the administrator of your organization has done this, you will need instance-level permissions on an asset in order to view it.
Using Search Metacharacters in the Keyword Search
Certain characters have a special function when used in the keyword search:
*Wildcard characters allow you to search for keywords that match a string pattern.
*The quote character (") is used to group keywords into phrases.
*To force the keyword search to treat these metacharacters as normal characters, precede the character with a backslash (\). If you want to include the backslash character itself in the search, type two backslashes.
Using Keywords
You can define the input for the keyword search in the following ways:
*A keyword search consists of 1-n search keywords. Multiple keywords are space separated. If multiple keywords are given, a logical disjunction (OR) is implied.
*A keyword is treated as partial text which can occur at the beginning of the searched strings. The starts with semantics are implied.
Example: If the keyword is customer, then the following matches are returned: A sample svc for customers as well as customerservice.
*As multiple keywords are OR combined, the keywords can match a single phrase (for example, in the description) or individual keywords can occur in different attributes.
Example: If a search is conducted for customer service, then customer could be matched in the description and service in an object specific attribute.
*If quotes (" ") exist around a phrase, then a search is performed on the exact phrase within the quotes. A space within a quoted phrase is considered as a space character and not as a logical operation.
*You can mix and match any number of words and quoted phrases within the keyword field.
*The search is neither case nor accent sensitive, even within a quoted phrase.
Example: A search for abc will return the same results as a search for ABC or Abc.
*If you type a string that contains an odd number of double-quote characters, then the last double-quote character is ignored when the search is performed.
*The simple search can include wildcard characters.
In addition to the general guidelines listed above, CentraSite Business UI has its own search functionality that differs from CentraSite Control in the following ways:
*If the keyword search input field is empty, then the search execution will not happen.
*If an asset name exceeds n characters, the name is automatically truncated. You can select the maximum number of characters to display in the asset name using the property maxCharactersToShow in the configuration file. By default, the maximum character limit is set to “60”.
Using Wildcards
The available wildcard characters are as follows:
Character
Usage
* or %
If you use the percent symbol (%) or the asterisk (*), CentraSite replaces the wildcard symbol with as many characters as necessary to find a match. For example, an entry of A%n returns both Amazon and American. If you type *al, then CalcService, Calendar and AustralianPostCode all fit the search criteria.
? or _
If you use the question mark (?) or the underscore (_), CentraSite replaces the wildcard symbol with a single character in order to find a match. Example: CustomerSVC?Request matches any character for ?.
You can use a wildcard character at any point in the keyword text and multiple times throughout the keyword text. If you type a wildcard character in the middle of a string, for example cat*dog, then at least one of the searched attributes must contain the string in order for the asset or supporting document to be included in the result set.
If a wildcard character between two words is surrounded by spaces, such as word1 * word2, the wildcard will match one word.
Note: Here are some general guidelines:
*Certain non-alphanumeric characters that can appear in the name of an asset are currently ignored by CentraSite's wildcard mechanism when you include them in a keyword search. In particular, the hyphen (-) is ignored. Thus, if you have created the assets asset-1 and asset_1, the wildcard search for asset?1 will find asset_1 but not asset-1.
*The percent (%) character acts as a word delimiter when it appears in the text to be searched. Thus, for example, if the description field of an asset contains the text abc%def (the characters a, b, c, %, d, e, f), this is treated by the search mechanism as two adjacent words abc and def. A wildcard search such as abc*def looks for a single word beginning with abc and ending with def, so the search will not find this asset.
Searchable Attributes
You can specify generic attributes (that is, attributes common to all asset types) and type-specific attributes as search criteria.
Generic Attributes
The generic attributes, also called, Common Attributes, that can be used as search criteria in the CentraSite Business UI are described in the following table:
Search Attribute
Usage
Name
Use this attribute to search for assets whose name matches a specified text string.
You can specify a substring or expression that can be combined with a contains word (default option), starts with, equals, or not equals expression. The search is neither case nor accent sensitive. If starts with is used, no wildcard is necessary as a postfix. If contains word is used, the word given is treated as a partial string with implicit wildcards. If equals or not equals is used, no wildcards are supported.
If multiple substrings have been given the parameters are implicitly quoted. Explicit quotations and wildcards can be used, and behave in the same way as for keyword searches.
Description
Use this attribute to search for assets whose description matches a specified text string.
Usage is the same as for the Name attribute.
Created Date
Use this attribute to search for assets with a specified creation date.
You can select a date and apply a before, after, on, or between criterion. If between is used, a second input field allows you to specify the end date.
The date input parameters allow year, month and day input as well as hour and minute. Hour and minute default to 0. The data format is used as specified in the account preferences of a user (defaults to yyyy-mm-dd). No wildcards are supported.
Last Updated
Use this attribute to search for assets with a specified modification date.
Usage is the same as for the Creation Date attribute.
Key
Use this attribute to search for an asset that exactly matches the given UDDI V3 key.
If no prefix uddi: is given, this is implied automatically. No wildcards are supported.
Owner
Use this attribute to search for assets belonging to a specified user.
Select the user through a Browse list.
Organization
Use this attribute to search for assets provided by a specified organization.
Select the organization through a Browse selection list.
Version
Use this attribute to search for a specific version of asset.
Subscribers
Use this attribute to search for users receiving notifications when changes are made to assets.
Consumers
Use this attribute to search for users or applications consuming the asset.
Type-Specific Attributes
In addition to the generic attributes listed in the table above, each asset type can have its own type-specific search criteria, based on the type-specific attributes of the asset type.
The type-specific attributes can be selected in two ways in CentraSite Control:
*Select the entry Type-specific property in the drop-down list of generic search criteria, as described in the table above.
*Select one of the additional entries in the Criteria list as follows:
The type-specific search criteria are shown in the Criteria list in the form <AttributeName> (<DataType>), where <AttributeName> is the name of the type-specific attribute, and <DataType> is the data type of the attribute.
For example, if you select the asset type Service in the Types field, the Criteria drop-down list contains search criteria like SOAP-Version (String), which refers to the service's type-specific attribute SOAP-Version which has the data type String.
Depending on the data type of the type-specific attribute you select, the Criteria section of the dialog changes to reflect the search possibilities for that data type.
Attribute Data Types and Supported Search Operators
Not all attribute data types support the full set of search operators. Some data types execute only with certain operators.
The following tables lists the supported search operators you can use when searching for attributes depending on their data types.
Data Type
Search Operators and Description
String
Equals
NotEquals
StartsWith
Contains
International String
Equals
NotEquals
StartsWith
Contains
Multiline String
Equals
NotEquals
StartsWith
Contains
Email
Equals
StartsWith
URL/URI
Equals
StartsWith
Number
Equals
NotEquals
Greater
Smaller
GreaterorEquals
SmallerorEquals
Boolean
N/A
Date/Time
Before
After
Between
On
Duration
N/A
IP Address
Equals
Between
File
Equals
StartsWith
Classification
N/A. Assumed to Equals.
Relationship
N/A. Assumed to Equals.
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