Synonym Search and Phonetic Search in SAS Visual Investigator

SAS Visual Investigator offers powerful search capabilities to assist investigators in performing discovery-based investigations. This post is part two of a series dedicated to Search. In part one of the series, I wrote about facet filters and text search, including how to build a more powerful search query.

In this post, I will cover two more types of searches available in SAS Visual Investigator: synonym search and phonetic search.

Synonym Search Overview

A synonym is a word that have the same meaning as another word. For example, the word “lucky” is a synonym for the word “fortunate”. Synonym searches leverage synonyms to broaden your search capabilities. It enables you to not only search for your keyword but also words or phrases that are similar in meaning to your search term.

In other words, synonym search offers an expanded search coverage by matching on concept and intent rather than strictly on rigid keywords.

In the use case of auto and home insurance, searching for “theft” would return all vehicles that have been reported as “stolen”.

Phonetic Search Overview

Whereas synonym search allows you to find terms that have similar meaning to your search term, phonetic search allows you to find terms that have similar sounds to your search term. For example, a phonetic search for the word “see” might also return objects containing the word “sea”.

In the use case of auto and home insurance, this search technique may prove helpful when searching for names of individuals and places that have a lot of spelling variations. For example, the name “Kaylee” may be spelled as “Kayleigh”, “Kaylie”, or “Caylee”. Phonetic search not only offers an opportunity to capture all known spelling variation, it would also capture misspellings.

Configuration

SAS Visual Investigator

Let’s start by talking about how to configure SAS Visual Investigator to enable synonym search and phonetic search.

From the SAS Visual Investigator administrator UI (Manage Investigate and Search), click on Properties, followed by double clicking on Search to configure search properties.

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In the Search properties window, check the relevant top-level check boxes to enable both synonym search and phonetic search.

The secondary-level check boxes give you the options to:

enable phonetic search for free text searches
enable phonetic search on object labels
enable synonym search for free text searches
enable synonym search on object labels

These boxes allow multi select, therefore giving you the flexibility to configure the system to your requirements.

Note that if neither of the secondary-level check boxes are checked, phonetic search and synonym search will not be enabled for free text searches or on object labels, but they can still be enabled for entity-specific data fields. More on this below.

Additionally, in order to perform a synonym search, the administrator must configure a pre-defined list of synonyms for SAS Visual Investigator to reference. To configure the synonym list, double click on Synonyms on the Properties page.

On the Synonyms page, click on Import synonyms to import a text file containing your synonyms.

In terms of syntax, the synonym list is composed of a comma delimited list of words followed by “=>” and then the word they are replacements for.

For example: mad, furious, enraged, wrathful, indignant, exasperated, inflamed=>angry

Lastly, to make a particular field available for phonetic search and synonym search, navigate to the entity page (Data Objects -> Entity Name). On the Fields tab, double click on the desired field to modify its properties. Under Advanced Search, check the boxes for Available for phonetic searches and Available for synonym searches.

SAS Environment Manager

Note that there are also four configuration variables related to phonetic search and synonym search that are defined within SAS Environment Manager:

phoneticEnabled: Whether phonetic searching is enabled
phoneticEncoder: The encoder to use when defining the “sand_phonetic” analyzer
synonymEnabled: Whether synonym searching is enabled
synonymsPath: The path (relative to the OpenSearch config directory) to the text file containing the list of synonyms.

To find these variable, navigate to SAS Environment Manager (Manage Environment), followed by selecting Configuration. Choose the Visual Investigator Search and Discovery service.

Phonetic encoders transform written words into their coded representation based on their pronunciation. You can modify the aforementioned phoneticEncoder variable to change the phonetic encoder used by SAS Visual Investigator.

Synonym Search Usage

Now that we’ve covered the configuration steps to enable synonym search and phonetic search within the SAS Visual Investigator Administrator UI (Manage Investigate and Search), let’s navigate to the Investigator UI (Investigate and Search Data) to look at how such searches can be executed.

Example 1 – Synonym Search from the Search page

From the Search page, click on the downward arrow to the right of the search bar and select Synonym search, Phonetic search, or Phonetic and synonym search. From here, type the search term into the search bar and click on the magnifying glass to execute the search.

In the example below, I’m performing a synonym search with the search term of “Theft”.

For the claim objects, two fields have been made available for synonym and phonetic searches:

Claim type
Claim description

The returned results include claims containing both direct matches to the search keyword (Theft) and synonym matches (stolen) in either the claim type or the claim description fields.

Example 2 – Synonym Search as a Modifier

Another way to execute a synonym search or a phonetic search is to use their respective modifier as part of an advanced search. In the Advanced Search window, click on the ash (æ) button and select either Phonetic Search or Synonym Search.

In the example below, I’m executing an advanced search against the Claim Type field of the Auto Claim object, where I’ve enabled the Synonym Search modifier. I’m using the search term “Stolen”.

The returned results include two auto claims whose claim types contain synonym matches (Theft) for my search term (Stolen).

Example 3 - Synonym Search as a Modifier

In this last example, I’m executing an advanced search on the Customer Name field of the Customer entity with the Phonetic Search modifier enabled. The search term I’m using is “Dominik”. Note the spelling where the name ends in “k” instead of “c”.

The returned results are of customers whose first names sound the same as my search term (Dominik), but are spelled differently (Dominic).

Conclusion

In this post, I covered synonym search and phonetic search, including their configuration in SAS Visual Investigator. This is the second post in a series I’m doing on Search in SAS Visual Investigator. Stay tuned for topics such as Relationship Search, Map Search and more!

For additional content on SAS Visual Investigator, check out the following posts:

Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here.