How session attributes are stored

Session attribute values are stored as text data. This method of storage has several implications:

• When specifying search terms, you cannot use comparative operators on session attribute data. A text value for a session attribute cannot be specified as "greater than" another text value, for example.
• By default, in the search interface, characters that are not indexed are removed from the inputs, which includes punctuation such as , and . and $.
  Note: For searches of the Unica Discover Search database, the submitted query does not perform any modifications for the text-based search. So, the input, which is received from the search interface, is unchanged, meaning that the punctuation that is stripped by the search interface never reappears in the query to enable an exact match of data in the database.

If you must record numeric data in a session attribute:

• Store values as non-negative integers.
• Do not include any punctuation.
• Consider storing values as a range of values in different attributes.
• When performing a search for these values, use the like operator.