# NumericType Fields

You can configure the IDOL Content component to identify fields that contain numerical values. When these fields are indexed, Content stores them in a fast look-up table in memory, so that it can quickly return the field. A numeric field can contain a comma-separated list of numbers. Content stores each value as a numeric value for this field, for this document.

NOTE: You cannot configure a field with two numeric-based types concurrently. Numeric-based types include `NumericType`, `NumericDateType`, `MatchType`, `ParametricRangeType`, `ReferenceMemoryMappedType`, and `ParametricType` when the `ParametricNumericMapping` configuration parameter is set to `True`.

To set up NumericType fields to speed numeric queries

1. Open the IDOL Content component configuration file in a text editor.

2. List a process that identifies numeric fields in the `[FieldProcessing]` section. For example:

       [FieldProcessing]
       0=MyFirstProcess
       1=PriceFields

3. Create a section for each process that you listed, and in each section, declare a property for the process (you define the property later by setting one or more applicable configuration parameters). Identify the fields that you want to associate with the process.

   NOTE: The properties that you create must not have the same name as the processes.

   For example:

       [MyFirstProcess]
       Property=MyProperty
       PropertyFieldCSVs=*/MyField,*/MyOtherField

       [PriceFields]
       Property=Price
       PropertyFieldCSVs=*/PRICE

4. Create a section for the property in which you set the `NumericType` parameter to `True`. This enables Content to memory map the associated `PropertyFieldCSVs` fields. For example:

       [Price]
       NumericType=True

5. Save and close the configuration file.

6. Restart the IDOL Content component for your changes to take effect.

If you now send a query for a specific value that is stored in the `PRICE` field, Content memory maps the range that this value is in, so that it can return results more quickly next time a value that lies in this range is queried.

Examples:

    http://12.3.4.56:4000/action=Query&FieldText=NRANGE{50,100}:PRICE

The `PRICE` field must contain a number between 50 and 100 (including decimal numbers) for this document to return.

    http://12.3.4.56:4000/action=Query&Text=computer&Sort=PRICE:numberincreasing

IDOL Server sorts the results that it returns for the query according to the values that their `PRICE` fields contain. The results whose `PRICE` field contains the smallest value is listed first, followed by results with increasing values in the `PRICE` field.

_FT_HTML5_bannerTitle.htm