DialogWeb Help:  The RANK Command

The RANK command lets you perform trend or statistical analysis on an existing set. Terms are extracted from a specified field and listed in ranked order. The term that appears most frequently is listed first, followed by other terms, in descending order of frequency.

When you enter a RANK command followed by a field prefix code, for example rank pa, the system displays menu options that help you customize your RANK information. The options are:

• add a title to ranked output
• receive continuous output
• sort ranked terms alphabetically
• include such items as percentages, total database counts, and file-specific counts in a ranked list in a OneSearch session
• sort numeric entries in descending order

Once a term is ranked, the top eight terms automatically display. Each term is assigned a "rank number" that can be used to save a term for later use.

You can bypass the menu prompts and enter any of the above options in a single command line, for example, rank pa s2/all cont alpha detail.

The abbreviated RANK command options are:

• ALPHA - lists results in alphabetical rather than ranked order
• CONT - provides continuous output of ranked terms
• DETAIL - includes additional information for a more detailed display
• DESC - displays results in descending numeric value rather than in ranked order; use with numeric data
• PERCENT - includes a percentage column with basic results

You can rank multiple fields with similar data, for example, rank de,id. You can also rank partial fields by placing the field code and the range of characters you want to rank in parentheses. For example, to rank only the first four characters of the International Patent Classification Code, enter rank (ic 1-4).

Note:
RANK is designed to work with most phrase-indexed Additional Index fields, most numeric Additional Index fields, and phrase-indexed Descriptor (DE) and Identifier (ID) Basic Index fields. RANK also works with all MAP fields. However, to minimize retrieval of inappropriate data, RANK does not work for any word-indexed fields.