ULII uses an Open Source search engine called SINO, developed by AustLII.

If you have never used an Internet search engine before you can have SINO do most of the work for you. A search engine is a computer program that presents you with a list of documents that match the criteria which you specify. You specify the criteria in the form of 'show me all documents that have the words X, Y and Z in them'. You can narrow the criteria, for example: 'show me documents from Botswana High Court with the words X, Y and Z in them'.

The important thing to note is that the SINO search engine will return to you a list of documents that contain the words (or phrases) that you specify. Therefore you must choose your search words carefully. The best words (or phrases) to choose are those which are unique or particularly distinctive and are, of course, relevant to the subject matter of your query.
After choosing the unique or distinctive words for which you wish to search, type them into the search form. Now decide if you want to see documents that contain

1. any of the words listed (this will return the most results);
2. all of the words listed;
3. the words as a phrase (ie, in the exact order as typed); or
4. the words as a legislation name (ie Act or Regulation title);
5. the words as a case name (ie the names of the parties to a court/tribunal case);
6. the words as a document title.

Make your selection on the search form.

Finally, decide whether you wish to search across all of the ULII databases, an individual database or a group of related databases (eg All Case Law Databases) and then make your selection(s) from the database list.

When ready, press Search. A list of documents will be returned to you. You can edit your search in the query box at the top of the screen, or you can use Back on your browser to return to the search screen in order to refine your search.

The SINO search engine will relevance rank the results by default, which means that the best matches will appear at the top of the list. You will obtain the best results when searching for unique or distinctive words or phrases.
Two additional search options which you will notice on the search form are using autosearch and this Boolean query. These are explained below.

Using Autosearch

If you are typing in a search from the ULII home page, the sytem will treat this as an AutoSearch type search. SAFLII will analyse the words for which you are searching and attempt to apply the correct search approach for you.

• Boolean search
  Autosearch will recognise a boolean search by the presence of boolean operators

  in the words for which you are searching. So, if you use any of the following operators, and, or, near, w/10 etc, then AutoSearch will automatically treat the search as a Boolean search. If you do not want these words to be treated as boolean operators, you must put the phrase of which they are part in double quotation marks (ie "dogs and cats" and not dogs and cats). NOTE: Excessive placing of phrases in quotation marks can lead to very slow searching.

• Case name search

  Autosearch will recognise a search which contains v, v., vs, vs. or re as a search for a case name. The search results will be restricted to documents containing the phrases on either side of these identifiers, or immediately after the re. So, for example, the following searches all work: Mngquibisa and Another v The State, State vs Mngquibisa, In re: Dynamic Services (Pty) Limited and The Attorney General and Another, Re: Dynamic Services (Pty) Limited and The Attorney General and Another

• Single phrase search
  Autosearch will recognise words enclosed in double quotation marks as a phrase search. So the words "cats and dogs" enclosed in double quotation marks will trigger a phrase search. Note that Autosearch can only deal with a single phrase in double quotation marks. If you want to search for two or more phrases, you will need to use a Boolean search instead.

Unless autosearch recognises your search as one of the above searches, it will default the search type to an any of these words search. Do not forget that you can override autosearch by explicitly choosing another search type.

Advanced (Boolean) Searches

If you do a search from the Advanced Search Pages, the system switches by default to boolean mode. The Advanced Search form also allows you to select several other common search types ("all of these words", "words in a document title" etc).
If you want more than one phrase or word to appear in the retrieved documents, put the boolean operator and between them. For example, to find documents containing the phrase moral rights as well as the word copyright, you would type: moral rights and copyright.

If, on the other hand, you want to find either one term and/or another term, put an or between them. For example, to find documents which contain the words treaty, convention or international agreement you would type: treaty or convention or international agreement. If you wanted to, you could even put these two searches together - as in: (treaty or convention or international agreement) and moral rights and copyright.

The use of round brackets helps the search engine determine which instructions to process first.
For more in-depth information see the Search Operators Chart and Common Words List (words that are not searchable unless included in quotation marks or searched for as a phrase).
If you want to find two words or phrases which appear fairly close to each other (for example, the parties to a case), you can use the near proximity operator. If you wanted to find cases where Smith sued (or was sued by) Brown, you would type: smith near brown.

The near proximity operator finds two words or phrases within 50 words of each other, occurring in any order. For information on the other proximity operators available, see the Search Operators Chart

Displaying Search Results

Once you have performed a search on ULII you will be presented with a page, or several pages, of results. At this point you may decide to further refine the display of your search results using the features of the SAFLII search results screen which are described below.