FAQs

Q: Where can I find information about the MaDaM query language?

A: The MaDaM web frontend offers basic information about the query language and its capabilities, on the Search and Analysis page. You can find a help button labeled with a "?" to the right of the main search bar.

Q: Is searching case sensitive?

A: Searching in the main search bar is not case-sensitive; however, filtering in the individual column headers is case-sensitive.

Q: Can I use wildcards in searches?

A: Wildcards (such as "?" or "*") can generally be used in searches, but only in fields that are "wildcard-enabled". This option is disabled by default. You can enable it for selected fields on the model page. Please note that simply enabling this option for all fields will yield almost no benefit, but will severely reduce performance.

Q: Can I search for any given value of a signal?

A: No. You can only search for statistically relevant metrics (maximum, minimum) of the signals. Storing each value of each signal is not possible in a sustainable environment, and is almost never necessary. If specific individual values are of interest, you can execute jBEAM calculations for these values to add them as 'virtual' signals for searching.

Q: How can I order the sequence of columns on the search page?

A: You can define the order of columns on the model page. On the model page, select the model type for which you want to define columns, and then select the 'Columns' tab.

Q: What is the purpose of the 'Entity' model type?

A: The model has a hierarchical structure – each type contains the fields that it defines as well as the fields that its parents define. 'Entity' is the root type, to ensure that every model type that is created will have the core set of fields required by the system.

Q: How can I change fields for 'Test' or 'Data Object'?

A: Users cannot make manual changes to basic types such as 'Test', 'Data Object' or 'Entity'. To maintain system integrity, changes on these predefined root elements can only be implemented programatically by Kistler.

Q: What does it mean if a field is 'faceted'?

A: Fields marked as 'faceted' have their values displayed as filter elements in the facet tree on the search page. When defining which fields should be displayed in this tree, it is sensible to limit your selection to distinguishing elements. "Faceting" of Data Objects, for example, results in a set of facets that is too large and intertwined to be useful for filtering.

Q: What does it mean if a field is 'nested'?

A: Whether or not a field is 'nested' determines the relationship between instances of the referencing type and the field content. Let us take the referencing type 'container' and the referenced type 'content' as an example. There are four distinct relationships: each container can either reference one content element or multiples, and each content element can either be referenced by one container or by multiples. This gives us the following possible container-to-content relations; 1:1, 1:n, n:1, n:m. 'Nested' reference fields result in a 1:1 relationship, while 'nested' reference list fields produce a 1:n relationship. Similarly, 'non-nested' reference fields produce an n:1 relationship and 'non-nested' reference list fields result in an n:m relationship.

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