Advanced search

When searching for datapoints and components, it’s possible to use wildcards: special characters that match any character or sequence of characters.

• _ will match any single character. Searching for ab_ will return datapoints named abc and abd, but not a datapoint named azc.
• % will match a sequence of characters of any length, including no character at all. Searching for a%z will return datapoints named abz, abcdefz and az, but not a datapoint named zba.

Escaping

In case you wish to use the _ or % characters literally in your search, you will have to precede them with a backslash (\), which gives \_ and \%. The backslash character itself also has to be escaped in order to be searched for literally: \\.

Examples

If, for example, the naming scheme for datapoints in your building management system is something like {Room}-{System}-{Direction}\{Equipment}, you can use:

• room209-%-input to search for all sensors in room 209,
• room2__- to search for all datapoints of rooms on the second floor, and
• AHU-%\\%temp to search for all temperature-related datapoints of the ventilation system

Learn more

For further information, please refer to PostgreSQL’s documentation on the subject. We use the ILIKE function to match datapoint and component names when searching, and we add % wildcards on both ends of the search so that matches can be made anywhere in the datapoint or component name.