SBN Search

Page Layout

This page is divided into separate sections for entering the search criteria, viewing search results, viewing individual files, and loading and saving forms. To access these separate sections you can click on the tabs above. This will take you from section to section. Don't worry about losing any work you've done in a section before moving to another; it will be there when you get back. In general, most items that aren't self-explanatory will have tooltips that appear when you move the mouse over them. So if you're ever unsure about what will happen if you click on an icon, hover the mouse over it and a brief explanation should appear.

Entering Your Search

The "Form" tab will take you to a form that lets you enter search criteria that will find the data you are looking for. At the top of that page you can select what type of data you're looking for: Files or Comets. (The search process for both is largely the same.) Below that is a blue box that allows you to enter the search criteria you are interested in, and below that is a search button that will retrieve the results of your search.

To get started, let's say you want to find all the available files in a dataset. In the blue box, there will be a drop-down select displaying "Select keyword or object...". Click on it, and select "Data Set ID". After a moment two additional items will be displayed next to it. The first (displaying "is") lets you decide how you want to go about defining what values for the dataset ID you are interested in. We'll come back to this later. The other item displayed is another drop-down select displaying all the Dataset IDs that are available. Let's search for the dataset "DI/IRAS-C-FPA-5-9P-PHOT-V1.0". Since we know what dataset we want we can select it from the list.
Now, that line can be read as "Data Set ID is DI/IRAS-C-FPA-5-9P-PHOT-V1.0".

What if instead of a single dataset, we wanted to search in ALL the datasets that contain some sequence of letters. In the second select (the one displaying "is") let's instead select "starts with", which will let us describe what the beginning of the dataset should look like. Now, the drop-down select that contained the list of dataset IDs should have been replaced by a form input we can type in. Instead of searching for the single dataset listed above, lets search for all datasets starting with "DI/IRAS". So enter "DI/IRAS" into the form input.
Now, that line can be read as "Data Set ID starts with DI/IRAS"

If you want to enter more than one condition (we're also interested in the Declination), click the "Add new condition" button. This will add a new line below the "Data Set ID..." line where we can enter another term. Now, let's select "Declination". Again, we're presented with two more items on that line, but since Data Set IDs tend to be strings of characters, while Declination tends to be a number representing degrees, the way we go about specifying values for the Declination is different. The second item, a drop down displaying "is", now contains a list of relational operators for numbers. We can specify that the Declination should be greater than some value, or less than some value, or between two values, etc.. Let's search for files where the declination is between -31.5 and -20. To do this, select "is between" in the second drop-down. Now, two form inputs should be displayed on the side, specifying a lower and upper bound. Enter -31.5 into the first form input, and -20 into the second form input.
Now, the two terms can be read as:
Data Set ID starts with DI/IRAS
Declination is between -31.5 and -20 (Degrees)

Finally, we can decide if we want all of the conditions we entered to be matched, or any. If we select "All", then we will only see results that match both conditions. If we instead select "Any", then we will see results that match either condition, or both. For the purposes of this search, we want to match both conditions, so we can leave that as is.

Getting the Search Results

Once we've entered the search terms we want, we can click the "Search" button to retrieve the results. After a few seconds the "Results" tab should be selected, and the results of the search will be displayed. The results are broken into pages of 10 results, and if there is more than one page, a few navigation tools will be displayed at the top of the page. These will let you go forward and backward in the results, jump to the first or last page, or select any specific page. Let's select page 7. You can either press the forward arrow () six times, or you can select "Page 7" in the drop-down select.

Below the page navigation there will be a table of results. Each result has its own row, and each property we are displaying has its own column.

But what if we're also interested in Right Ascension, and don't want to limit what values it can be: we just want to know what they are. Instead of going back to the form, and entering some new condition like "Right Ascension is not -1000000" (which would work), we can ask the search engine to display another column in the results. Next to the page navigation there should be a drop-down select containing all the available keywords that are in some way relevant to the results of our search. If none of our search results had a value for Right Ascension, it wouldn't be in the list. Selecting "Right Ascension" in that list will retrieve the values for Right Ascension and add them to the results page. Try it.

We can also sort the results based on the values of one of the displayed columns, and stop columns from being displayed. Removing columns could be useful if, say, we're searching within a single dataset and don't want to see that dataset ID displayed in the results since we know it. In the header of every column there are three icons that allow us to do this. Don't worry if you remove a column that you decide later you want: you can just add it back again.

Downloading and Viewing Results

In the table of results, the left-most column contains a number of links that let you download the file, view its label, go to the directory containing the file, and download a .zip file containing the file and any other files it references.

To view the label of the file within the search engine, click on the page with text icon. After a few seconds the "Label" tab will be selected, displaying the label for that file. Some information that isn't available to the search engine is contained in the label, keywords like "NOTE" and "DESCRIPTION" for example.

In addition, to the left of the page navigation arrows above the results, there is a link to download all the results (not just the current page) as a comma separated value (.csv) file. This will open in spreadsheet programs.

Saving Forms and Loading Saved Forms

Once you've entered the search criteria you are interested, you can save the form so that you can retrieve it later. This isn't necessary if you're just viewing the results (the form will still be there when you go back to the "Form" tab). Clicking on the "Saved Forms" tab will take you to a form that lets you enter a name for your form and a brief description. These are saved as cookies on your computer, so to do this you must have cookies enabled. Once you have named and described your form, click the "Save" button, and it should appear above, in a list with any other saved forms you have.

To load a form you have saved, first save any form you are working on if you want to keep it since it will be lost and replaced by the new form. Click the "load" button next to the form you want, and it will appear on the "Form" tab. You can also remove forms you are no longer interested in. Saving a new form with the same name as an older form will overwrite the old form.