Am I reading The IQL "Manual" Incorrectly?

Question

I am reading the IQL Manual / webpage ( https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/use-insight-query-language-iql/#Keywords ) and I notice several inconsistencies (e.g. no space before and after Operators, "objecttype" instead of "objectType"), inconsistent use of double quotes) which make it difficult for a newbie like me to understand.

But the biggest problem I find is the inconsistent way of referencing to Object Types, Attributes and Objects.  For example, in some of the given examples "Office" is referred to as an attribute but in others it is referred to as "objects of Office type" (I think this should say "object with the Office attribute" or something similar).

One case that has got me particularly puzzled is this - referring to the dot operator - the example it gives is "Country.Office = Stockholm"

The explanation given says "The dot operator here navigates to the referenced object Office in the  attribute Country and compares Office with the value Stockholm.".

Should this not say something like "The dot operator here navigates to the referenced attribute Office in the Object Type Country and comparers the value of the Office attribute with the value Stockholm."?

Can somebody please advise whether my interpretation of what it should say is correct.  Or am I totally wide of the mark?

Thanks in advance.

Laurence Reynolds · Answer

Hi Jorden,

I think I understand what you are saying - within an Object Type definition the Attribute "Office" has been defined with a "Type" of "Object" that references another Object Type (name unknown).  Is this correct?

So what is "Country" in the example given?

I was hoping that I could use the dot operator to reference an attribute within one of my Object Types (e.g. SWStatus within SW) but it seems this does not help.  Any suggestions on how I can do this?

THanks.

Jorden Van Bogaert · Answer

Hi @Laurence Reynolds

What you're saying is correct, but the documentation is also correct. The "dot" operator does in fact refer to the attribute, but in this case "Office" is an attribute of type "object", meaning the selected value for this attribute, will be another object (likely of type Office);

I agree it's confusing though.

As for quotes, you can always use quotes if you want to be sure, but it's only mandatory if you have spaces in the object/attribute name so Country & "Country" both work, but "Country States" should be in quotes.

Insight also supports autocomplete for IQL if you use the "search for objects" feature in the dropdown. It can be a good place to play around with IQL and get a feeling of how it works.

Hope this helped.
Kind regards
Jorden