When using analyzers, you may encounter an unexpected behavior when searching within a property compared to searching within a node scope. The reason is that the node scope always uses the global analyzer.

Let's suppose that the property "mytext" contains the text : "testing my analyzers" and that you haven't configured any analyzers for the property "mytext" (and not changed the default analyzer in SearchIndex).

If your query is for example:

xpath = "//*[jcr:contains(mytext,'analyzer')]"
        

This xpath does not return a hit in the node with the property above and default analyzers.

Also a search on the node scope

xpath = "//*[jcr:contains(.,'analyzer')]"

won't give a hit. Realize that you can only set specific analyzers on a node property, and that the node scope indexing/analyzing is always done with the globally defined analyzer in the SearchIndex element.

Now, if you change the analyzer used to index the "mytext" property above to

<analyzer class="org.apache.lucene.analysis.Analyzer.GermanAnalyzer">

     <property>mytext</property>

</analyzer>

and you do the same search again, then for

xpath = "//*[jcr:contains(mytext,'analyzer')]"

you would get a hit because of the word stemming (analyzers - analyzer).

The other search,

xpath = "//*[jcr:contains(.,'analyzer')]"
        

still would not give a result, since the node scope is indexed with the global analyzer, which in this case does not take into account any word stemming.

In conclusion, be aware that when using analyzers for specific properties, you might find a hit in a property for some search text, and you do not find a hit with the same search text in the node scope of the property!