Re: [OT] MySQL full text search

["David Buckley" <db@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Alex Kinch" <alex@a...> wrote:
> Anyone here good on MySQL full text search? I'm using it to
> search for a song artist and title within a string and it
> works sort-of, but not brilliantly.

There are two basic approaches to full text searching a SQL
database.

The first way is the easy way, use %blah% whereupon the database
will do a full table scan looking for matching records.  This works
fine on small systems.

The second way is to build a word index, where you have a separate
table which indexes each word.  If your database supports triggers,
its easy to do this automatically on changes to the primary record.

Once you have a word index, you can then refine your search
techniques by using things like soundex, or synonym tables, the skys
the limit.