Counting Hits

The interMedia Text 8.1 release supports the CTX_QUERY.COUNT_HITS function, which you use in pre-8.1 to count the number of hits in a query before issuing the query. However in 8.1, you specify the index name rather than a policy. In addition, the struct_query parameter used in pre-8.1 to specify the structured predicate is obsolete.

In 8.1, to count the number of hits returned from a query with only a CONTAINS predicate, you can use CTX_QUERY.COUNT_HITS or COUNT(*) in a SELECT statement.

To count the number of hits returned from a query that contains a structured predicate, use the COUNT(*) function in a SELECT statement.

Because in-memory queries are obsolete in 8.1, the pre-8.1 procedure CTX_QUERY.COUNT_LAST procedure is also obsolete in 8.1.

Pre-8.1 Method

You count query hits with COUNT_HITS as follows:

declare count number;
begin
  count := ctx_query.count_hits(policy_name => my_pol, text_query => 'oracle',                     	
                              exact => TRUE);
 dbms_output.put_line('Number of docs with oracle:');
 dbms_output.put_line(count);
end;

8.1 Method

CONTAINS Predicate Only

To find the number of documents that contain the word oracle, you can do one of the following:

• Issue the query with the SQL COUNT function as follows:

  SELECT count(*) FROM news WHERE CONTAINS(text, 'oracle', 1) > 0;
  

• Use COUNT_HITS as follows:

  declare count number;
  begin
    count := ctx_query.count_hits(index_name => my_index, text_query => 'oracle',                     	
                                exact => TRUE);
   dbms_output.put_line('Number of docs with oracle:');
   dbms_output.put_line(count);
  end;
  

  See Also: To learn more about the syntax of CTX_QUERY.COUNT_HITS, see the Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference.

Structured Predicate

To find the number of documents returned by a query with a structured predicate, use count(*) as follows:

SELECT count(*) FROM news WHERE CONTAINS(text, 'oracle', 1) > 0 and author = 
'jones';