Step 1

• Any expression that is within parentheses is executed first.
• Example: In art and "intellectual property" w3 (scotland or ireland), the DBMS locates all of the instances of "scotland" or "ireland."

Step 2

• The operators in any search statement are executed in this order:
  1. Wildcards
  2. Proximity operators
  3. Range operators
  4. Boolean (logical) operators in this order
     1. not
     2. and
     3. or
• Example: In art and "intellectual property" w3 (scotland or ireland), the DBMS:
  1. Executes the "or" between "scotland" and "ireland" because the words are within the parentheses.
  2. Searches for the phrase "intellectual property" within 3 words of either "scotland" or "ireland."
  3. Searches for the word art in combination with all of the above.