Search Tips

Overview

Using ComponentSource Search is as easy as entering your search term(s) into the search box and click the magnifying glass or search button to show your results. By default this will search for Products, but if your search term(s) has a related match in an alternative search field you will see "Matching Publisher Brands", "Matching Categories" or "Matching Help Articles" showing these related results. When using the search box from the top of the web page You can proactively search these alternative fields; Publisher Brands, Product Categories or Help Articles by selecting them from the drop down.

Getting good results - Successful searches include terms such as the Publisher's Brand name (e.g. DevExpress), the product name (e.g. DXperience), the function of what you need a product to do (e.g. Create WinForms apps) or the architecture of a product (e.g. .NET). You should also consider if any of your terms are similar and commonly interchangeable; changing words such as 'Zip' to 'Compress' could show better results. Another factor that can affect your search results is removing the trailing ’s’ from certain words, e.g. grid and grids will return differing results.

"Did you mean" - If you have misspelt any words in your search term(s) then we will offer a "Did you mean" suggestion, you can click on this suggestion if you feel it's a better match.

"OR" search - ComponentSource Search is an "OR" search; only one of your search terms needs to match in order to find results. When multiple terms are entered a complex algorithm is utilized to find the best matches, this takes into consideration search term proximity, frequency, etc. You can achieve an "AND" search by using Inclusive Search operators, which is documented below in section 2.

Part Numbers - You can search ComponentSource for Product part numbers e.g. APDNTODE.

Not case sensitive - ComponentSource Search is not case sensitive, however, it will return more results if using CamelCase terms, this not only searches for the original term, but also splits the term, e.g. WinForms will show results for "winforms" and "win forms".

Special characters such as ! or @ and punctuation - Only use special characters in your search if you expect it to be in the specific name of what you're searching for. Examples include product such as IP*Works!, publishers such as /n software or architecture such as .NET. Apart from these special cases and the Search Operators explained below ComponentSource Search ignores all punctuation.

Search Operators

Search Operators allow you to narrow your search to get more specific results.

Phrase searches - Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in double quotes. For example: "outlook style grid" will retrieve all matches where the words are present in the specified order and proximity.

Wild card searches - By typing an asterisk (*) at the end of a word you can retrieve all products that start with this word. e.g. If you search for dat* you will retrieve data, database, DataView, date…

Inclusive Searches - If a word is essential to getting the results you want, you can specify this by putting a plus sign (+) directly in front of it and preceded by a space, for example: Chart +GIF.

Exclusive Searches - If you do not want a specific word to be found in the search, you can specify this by putting a minus sign (-) directly in front of it and preceded by a space, e.g. Security Protocols -PCT.

Sets and Parentheses - It's also possible to create very powerful and complex searches, by combining search words, operators and parentheses.

e.g. If you are looking for a charting product that is capable of displaying both GIF and JPEG images then use the following query: Chart +(GIF JPEG).

If you are looking for a charting product that is capable of displaying either GIF or JPEG images then use the following query: Chart +(GIF,JPEG).

The parentheses denote a logical "set", the plus sign denotes a "must include" and the space or comma between the words GIF and JPEG denote the Boolean "AND" and "OR" respectively.

Faceted Search

In order to refine the search results, ComponentSource provides a faceted search, this groups items into specific categories letting you drill into search results and get to a more specific result set. The facets are positioned down the side of the search page and each facet has a count listed so you can see the degree of refinement it offers. We have four primary facets:

Category - The product catalog on ComponentSource has categories and sub-categories, you can select facets of these sub categories to refine your search; e.g. if you wanted to list all of our Barcodes Components, you can drill down thought the facets to this search: Components - Presentation Layer - Imaging and Barcodes - Barcodes.

Platform - You can also facet your search for products based on their platform, such as .NET Components, Java Components, Windows Applications or Microsoft Visual Studio Add-ins.

Publisher Brand - This is useful if you want to list all products from a particular publisher, e.g. all DevExpress products or all Infragistics products

Result Type - If you are looking for a specific result type, this facet could help you find it, e.g. DevExpress Licensing or ComponentOne Release Notes.

Catalog Browsing

If you're not exactly sure what you are looking for you can browse our catalog and explore the variety of Components, Applications and Add-Ins and drill into sub-categories that interest you. You can also browse the Publisher Brands, and see what products they offer in our marketplace.