note: i never said this was an optimal solution; i just said thats what ive
seen.
obviously i havent worked on any major search engine to date.
in fact i was fishing a bit for some info on how to do it right.

> On 7/5/07, Robert Cummings < robert@interjinn.com> wrote:
> If you need to use MySQL use the MATCH
> AGAINST syntax since it will index the data and search much faster. I've
> heard tell it sucks beyond a certain size, but it's great for quick
> solutions and moderate sized data. If you need something more powerful
> look into something like Lucene.

thanks Robert,

-nathan


On 7/5/07, Robert Cummings < robert@interjinn.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 22:26 -0400, Nathan Nobbe wrote:
> > Kevin,
> >
> > just like Daniel said,
> > > $sql .= "OR product_description *LIKE '%".$terms."%'"*;
> >
> > most of the *search engines* ive seen revolve around the use of the LIKE
>
> > construct<
> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/...#operator_like
> >
> > which is a simplified regex mechanism for an SQL query [for MySQL at
> least,
> > probly other RDBMS' as well]
>
> Don't do that. Unless you have a teency weency set of data don't use
> LIKE syntax to match data. It's extremely inefficient and requires
> scanning the entire table. If you need to use MySQL use the MATCH
> AGAINST syntax since it will index the data and search much faster. I've
> heard tell it sucks beyond a certain size, but it's great for quick
> solutions and moderate sized data. If you need something more powerful
> look into something like Lucene.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.
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