Can Oracle Text query return the terms found?

I am querying an Oracle 10g database. The database contains a table with documents that has an oracle text index. I query the database using a query like

SELECT SCORE(1), title from news WHERE CONTAINS(text, 'people OR country ', 1) > 0;

Is there a way to see what terms in the "contains" statement that Oracle found in the documents?

You might want to look into the MARKUP or HIGHLIGHT functions of the CTX_DOC package. An example of how MARKUP can be used for your query (this assumes your index is called idx_news and you have an ID column):

declare
  MARKLOB   clob;
  MARK1     number;
  MARK2     number;

  cursor NEWS_SEARCH is
    select * from NEWS;
begin
  for REC in NEWS_SEARCH loop
    CTX_DOC.MARKUP('idx_news', to_char(REC.ID), 'people OR country', MARKLOB);
    MARK1 := instr(MARKLOB, '>>');

    if MARK1 + MARK2 <> 0 then
      dbms_output.
       PUT_LINE(
        REC.ID || ',' || substr(MARKLOB, MARK1 + 3, MARK2 - MARK1 - 3));
    end if;
  end loop;
end;
/

What it does is mark up your text (surround the found items with >>) and outputs that new text to a clob which is then searched for the markup. All text that is found in your query will be marked up but my PL/SQL will only display the first result; it can be adapted to find them all and display only the unique ones. This is a simple example and perhaps can become too complicated for your original query but it's here to point the way.

Alternatively, a simple SELECT may suffice if all you have is an OR in your text query:

select decode(sign(SCORE(1))
             ,1, decode(sign(SCORE(2)), 1, 'both', 'people')
             ,'country')
         as WHICH
      ,TITLE
  from NEWS A
 where CONTAINS(TITLE, 'people', 1) > 0 or CONTAINS(TITLE, 'country', 2) > 0;

This checks the score for individual searches on 'people' and 'country' and works out which ones were positive, returning 'both' if both search terms were found.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#5264, answer score: 2