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The spatial search has been extended to provide support for performing an attribute search against a spatial engine.
That is a spatial search can now be used to perform the same function as an attribute search, but rather than performing the operation against a database table it 's is performed against a spatial engines engine layer.

None of the operations outlined above in "So a spatial search works like this" is performed, instead the operation more closely follows what an attribute search performs, i.e. finding rows in a layer that have attributes that match what a user has entered.

The configuration of the spatial attribute search follows more closely that of the attribute search. Because it is using the underlying API of the spatial engine, rather than SQL as the attribute search does (although some spatial engines also use SQL as their API), the support and configuration may be different depending upon the level of support provided by the underlying spatial engine. For example, a spatial search operating on a spatial engine that is pointing to a directory of shapefiles may operate differently from one that is pointing to ArcSDE. This is similar to the differences in an attribute search that is pointing to an Oracle database compared to one that is pointing to SQL Server.