Re: Full-Text databases (Oracle ConText, Informix Text Datablades, Sybase Text, Texis, PLS, etc. - any opinions?

We have used Informix with the Excalibur text datablade very successfully. We have also grown some of our own non-indexed text searching datablades and have good performance with these as well. For example, we ported the public domain grep source code to a datablade, now we can even do global search and replace on the data in the database without it ever leaving the server! Now thats power.

From an architectural standpoint, I think you will see much better performance with Informix than any of the others due to the single engine implementation. The others use middleware and messaging with no direct support for the data types and operations inside the database.

Frank Oelschlager
ECOlogic Corporation

no.email_at_nowhere.com wrote in message <36bffec7.17034238_at_news.primenet.com>...
>I have an application that requires searching on a combination of
>structured and free-text fields. I'm considering using:
>
>Oracle with ConText
>Informix with one of their Text DataBlades
>Sybase with their fulltext feature
>Thunderstone's Texis
>Other solutions which seem more kludgy (PLS, hacked versions of
>SWISH-E, etc.).
>
>Anyone used any of these? Have any opinion on them?
>
>I'm particularly concerned with:
> - performance: I know that at least unti the current versions,
>ConText made temporary results tables and did joins for each search.
>This seems rather slow.
>- ease of set-up and ease of use
>- necessity to re-index and usability of continuous incremental
>indexes
>- scalability: replication issues, etc.
>
>
>Thanks!
>RL
>
>
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Received on Tue Feb 09 1999 - 00:00:00 CET