Meaning & use
federated search
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Meaning
noununcountable
A way of searching several separate databases or systems at once through one query, with the results brought together on a single page.
Grammar: Usually uncountable: the library uses federated search.
Patterns
- federated search across something
- use federated search
The university library offers federated search so students can check journals, books and theses in one go.
With federated search, one query reaches the email archive, the wiki and the file server.
Federated search is convenient, but results from different sources can be hard to rank fairly.
Common combinations
- federated search engine
- The company built a federated search engine for its internal systems.
- federated search tool
- Librarians recommend a federated search tool for research.
- run a federated search
- Run a federated search across all repositories.
- federated search results
- Federated search results are merged into one list.
- federated search across databases
- They enabled federated search across databases at the hospital.
Synonyms and how they differ
- metasearch
- Metasearch usually sends queries to public web search engines, while federated search often covers private or specialized databases.
- unified search
- Unified search often implies one combined index, whereas federated search asks each source separately.
- cross-database search
- Cross-database search describes the same idea in plain words but is less established as a technical term.
Word family
- federate verb
- to join separate groups or systems into one union
- federated adjective
- made up of separate parts that cooperate
- federation noun
- a group of separate bodies united under a central arrangement
- search noun
- the act of looking for information
Commonly confused: federated search or federal search?
federated search vs federal search
Federal means relating to a national government, and a federal search might be a search of government records. Federated means joined from separate sources.
Practice
The library's new tool sends a single query to the catalog, the journal database and the thesis archive and merges the answers, which is called ______.
Choose one answer.
Federated search queries multiple sources at once and combines the results. Data mining looks for patterns in a large dataset and is not about searching separate sources together.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “federated search”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.