- -The Bugzilla query page is designed to be reasonably easy to use. -But, with such ease of use always comes some lack of power. The -"boolean chart" section is designed to let you do very powerful -queries, but it's not the easiest thing to learn (or explain). -
-So. -
- -The boolean chart starts with a single "term". A term is a -combination of two pulldown menus and a text field. -You choose items from the menus, specifying "what kind of thing -am I searching for" and "what kind of matching do I want", and type in -a value on the text field, specifying "what should it match". - -
- -The real fun starts when you click on the "Or" or "And" buttons. If -you bonk on the "Or" button, then you get a second term to the right -of the first one. You can then configure that term, and the result of -the query will be anything that matches either of the terms. - -
- -Or, you can bonk the "And" button, and get a new term below the -original one, and now the result of the query will be anything that -matches both of the terms. - -
- -And you can keep clicking "And" and "Or", and get a page with tons of -terms. "Or" has higher precedence than "And". (In other words, you -can think of each line of "Or" stuff as having parenthesis around it.) - -
- -The most subtle thing is this "Add another boolean chart" button. -This is almost the same thing as the "And" button. The difference is -if you use one of the fields where several items can be associated -with a single bug. This includes "Comments", "CC", and all the -"changed [something]" entries. Now, if you have multiple terms that -all talk about one of these fields, it's ambiguous whether they are -allowed to be talking about different instances of that field. So, -to let you have it both ways, they always mean the same instance, -unless the terms appear on different charts. - -
- -For example: if you search for "priority changed to P5" and -"priority changed by person@addr", it will only find bugs where the -given person at some time changed the priority to P5. However, if -what you really want is to find all bugs where the milestone was -changed at some time by the person, and someone (possibly someone -else) at some time changed the milestone to P5, then you would put -the two terms in two different charts. - -
- -Clear as mud? Please, I beg you, rewrite this document to make -everything crystal clear, and send the improved version to Tara. - -