The Lucene language is provided by the IR framework and the query API is built on top of the Lucene standard query parser. For more details see Apache Lucene - Query Parser Syntax. The Search Enterprise documentation provides Apache Lucene - Query Parser Syntax information specific to Alfresco.
Properties are attributes defined in an Alfresco content model. They are identified by qualified names, meaning they are composed of:
a namespace
a local name
This avoids conflicts between local names used in multiple models, for example finance:name and cm:name.
A property can be declared in queries using three notations:
Unqualified name, for example title. In this case it will be associated to the default namespace. The property is therefore assumed to exist and to be valid in the default content model.
@title:OOP
@title:(Object Oriented Programming)
Prefixed name, for example cm:title. The prefix is the short form of a given namespace. It must be uniquely associated to a namespace and to a content model.
When prefixes and fully qualified names are used, the property has to be prefixed with the @ symbol and this is one of the main differences between AFTS and Lucene. Special characters (i.e. characters that have a special meaning in Lucene) need to be escaped using the backslash.