How to perform a searches using CrimeStar

When using CrimeStar’s predefine search forms there is one important issue, which you should consider.

· Don’t provide too much information

The logic usually uses all provided search criteria in an AND condition. What does this mean ? When you provide for example a last name and a first name in a search form, the search logic will search for all records, which have both that last name AND that first name. So if you were searching for last name = ‘SMITH’ and first name = ‘JOHN’, you will only get those records. While you may be certain about the information you are looking for, you can’t always be certain about the way the data was originally entered. Therefore ‘JON SMITH’ would not be found. While just searching for last name = ‘SMITH’ may result in too many possible records, a search of last name = ‘SMITH’ and first name = ‘J’ may be a better approach.

Using just the first letter of a name will result an all the records whose name starts with the same letter. Likewise, you could specify the first two or three letters. Here are some examples;

Search for Result

‘J’ John, Johnny, Jim, James, Jerry, Jill, Joanne, etc. etc.

‘JO’ John, Johnny, Joanne, etc

‘JOH’ John, Johnny, etc