Searching external sources

In the Analyst's Notebook desktop client, the External Searches window contains everything that you need in order to understand, configure, and run the queries that search external data sources.

  1. On the Home tab of the ribbon, click External Searches.

    The External Searches window opens, and the queries that your system administrator defined are listed on the Queries page. The list of available queries is displayed in up to three sections: Available with the current chart selection; Available with or without a chart selection; and Not available with the current chart selection. Sections are not displayed if there are no queries available.

  2. Optional: Use the Filter these queries field to enter text that filters the list of queries by name.

  3. Click a query to select it and display more information about it.

    The pane on the right of the Queries page lists the actions that you can perform with the selected query. The same pane also describes what types of information the query can return, indicates whether the query supports or requires seeds, and might include a longer explanation of its behavior.

  4. Unless the query requires seeds that you have not selected on the chart surface, you can click Open.

What happens next depends on whether the query supports parameters:

  • If the query does not support parameters, it runs immediately and you see a new page that contains results from the external data source.

  • If the query does support parameters, you see a new page where you can enter values for those parameters before you run the search.

    Note: Queries that have no mandatory parameters have an extra action available: Copy to chart. This action copies any results straight to the chart without first showing them in a list. Long running queries do not gain the extra action.

After the query runs, the External Searches window gains a Results view that contains the search results. From here, you can select results and copy them to the chart surface.

Depending on the configuration of the Export-to-iBase plug-in, the Export to iBase icon might be activated. If it is, you can select records from the search results and export them directly to iBase.

Tip: You can use text in the Search within results field to filter the results.