With Oracle Text, you can create indexes of type CONTEXT, SEARCH INDEX, CTXCAT, and CTXRULE.

By default, the system expects your documents to be stored in a text column. After you satisfy this requirement, you can create an Oracle Text index by using the CREATE INDEX SQL statement as an extensible index of type CONTEXT, without explicitly specifying preferences. The system automatically detects your language, the data type of the text column, and the format of the documents. Next, the system sets indexing preferences.

You can create a search index using the CREATE SEARCH INDEX SQL statement for indexing and querying structured, unstructured, or semi-structured data, such as textual, JSON, and XML documents. The SEARCH INDEX is an index type that supports the CONTEXT index functionality along with sharded databases and system-managed partitioning for index storage.

To create an Oracle Text index:

1. (Optional) Determine your custom indexing preferences, section groups, or stoplists if you do not use the defaults. The following table describes these indexing classes:

   Class	Description
   Datastore	How are your documents stored?
   Filter	How can the documents be converted to plaintext?
   Lexer	What language is being indexed?
   Wordlist	How should stem and fuzzy queries be expanded?
   Storage	How should the index data be stored?
   Stoplist	What words or themes are not to be indexed?
   Section Group	How are document sections defined?

2. (Optional) Create custom preferences, section groups, or stoplists.

3. Create the Oracle Text index with the CREATE INDEX SQL statement. Name your index and, if necessary, specify preferences.