Help:Learning ASK

Learning to use ASK

Imagine conducting a search for a male, born in Michigan between 1965 and 1968, who has interests in both skiing and poker. Do you think that would be easy with MySpace, Wikipedia, or Google? Fat chance. But on Centiare, you would just set up the following ASK query on an out-of-the-way page in your User or Directory space...

<ask>
[[Marital_Status:=*|Status]]
[[City:=*]]
[[State Code:=*|State]]
[[Phone:=*]]
[[Person_Gender:=Male]][[Person_Gender:=*|Gender]]
[[Birth_State_Name:=Michigan]][[Birth_State_Name:=*|Born]]
[[Birth_Year:=>1965]][[Birth_Year:=<1968]][[Birth_Year:=*|Birth]]
[[Personal_Interest::Skiing]][[Personal_Interest::Poker]][[Personal_Interest::*|Interests]]
</ask>

...instantaneously produces this report:

<ask> Status * State * MaleGender MichiganBorn >1965Property "Birth Year" (as page type) with input value ">1965" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.<1968Property "Birth Year" (as page type) with input value "" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Birth SkiingPokerInterests </ask>