Wildcard searches in Maximo 7

Written by Chon Neth, Editor-in-Chief

You can use a “wildcard” character or characters with letters or numbers to indicate you want to find records that begin with, end with, or contain those letters/numbers. There are four characters you can use as a wildcard: the asterisk (*), the percent sign (%), the underscore (_), and the question mark (?).

  • Use * or % to stand for any number of characters (zero, one, or multiple) in the specified position.
  • Use _ or ? to stand for a single character in the specified position.

There should be no space between the wildcard and the other characters.

Example:

  • Enter 123* or 123% to find records that start with 123, such as 123, 12345, 123ABC, etc.

Example:

  • Enter *123 or %123 to find records that end in 123, such as 123, 5123, or PUMP123.

Example:

  • Enter *123* or %123% to find records that contain 123, such as 123, 1234, PUMP123, or XX12300Valve.

Example:

  • Enter Elec* or Elec% to find records that contain words that start with “Elec,” such as electric, electromagnetic, or electrode.

Example:

  • Enter 123? or 123_ to find any four-character records that start with 123, such as 1234, 1230, 123g, etc.

Example:

  • Enter _18 or ?18 to find any three-character records that end with 18, such as 418 or J18.

The Equal Sign (=) Operator

You can place an equal sign (=) before a word or number to find only records that match that word or number exactly. There should be no space between the = and the word or characters that follow it.

  • = means “match exactly”

Example:

  • Enter =123 to find any records with the exact characters 123 in the field. (Search results would not include numbers such as 0123 or 1234AB. If you enter just 123, without the =, search results would include 0123 and 1234AB.)

Searching for Null and Not Null Values

You can enter the following values into a search field on the List tab:

  • When searching for a null value enter: ~null~
  • When searching for not null values enter: != ~null~

Did You Know...

As Maximo Experts, we have developed several add-on products for Maximo that mobilize the work force, simplifies assignments, provides ad-hoc reporting capabilities and facilitates the seamless integration of Service Requests into Maximo.

Check out our products by clicking on the following links: EZMaxMobile, EZMaxPlanner and EZMaxRequest.

Find Out More

15 thoughts on “Wildcard searches in Maximo 7”

  3. Hi, can you advise how you perform a search that is the equivalent of NOT= . For example, if I wanted to exclude a certain owner group from a list of results?

    Thanks

    1. You can use != but that only works for some fields such as problem codes. A field that can have multiple selections is where you can use it. Or you can just modify the SQL where clause and filter out data that you don’t want.

  4. Is there any way to disable the functionality where Maximo places an equal sign in front of the value after selecting it from a lookup? Causing a problem with our BIRT report parameter lookups. We keep having to remember to strip out the = sign in our report sql.

  5. Hi,

    as you already know you can search into a Description field, for instance, using expression like Desc1,Desc2 that means you are looking for Desc1 OR Desc2, but do you know if it is possible to filter on Maximo using the following criteria: Desc1 OR NULL?
    I’ve tried with Desc1,~null~ but it does not work.
    Thanks for your suggestion.
    Have a good day.

    2. Description field if you look in Database Configuration is a Text searched enabled attribute. Maximo will convert SQL to use contains in the where clause. I tried Desc1|~null~ but that doesn’t work for me. It will work with Desc1|Desc2 though.

    1. Thus far the only way I’ve found requires editing of the ‘where clause’ replacing the contains phrase with .. description like ‘%abc-123-x%’. I’d like to find a friendlier way to do this for my users – without changing the search method to ‘wildcard’ – unless that is the only viable technique. 

  7. How can I modify this query for description to DOES NOT CONTAIN $Lab or $Standard…. I tried every which way and can not figure this out !!
    ((status = ‘INSCH’ or status = ‘WSCH’) and crewid = ‘BBBWCAMPUS’ and contains(description,’$Lab OR $Standard OR $HEPA OR $Fume OR $Quarterly Calibration’) > 0 and siteid = ‘BB’) and (exists (select 1 from maximo.multiassetlocci where ((location like ‘BB22%’ or location like ‘BB1181%’ or location like ‘BB36%’ or location like ‘BB33%’)) and (recordkey=workorder.wonum and recordclass=workorder.woclass and worksiteid=workorder.siteid)))

Leave a Reply