Form queries
To query the database, users have two choices: a free query, or a more user-friendly (but less powerful) form query. The free query is discussed in the next section; here, we'll describe the form query. You can get to the form query menu by selecting the 'Query By Example' feature from the main menu; you will be greeted with the following menu, programatically generated and based on the template you selected:
The form query menu. Fill out desired fields to query the repository.
By selecting values for attributes, and entering values for child nodes, you are creating a query string which will be passed to the repository to get your results. Click on the "submit" button to query the repository. In the following example, the user has queried for all "confidential" defects whose synopses contain the word "eels":
The results of a form query. Note that the actual query string used is present at the top of the result; this can be one way to learn the query language.