Re: Db design for a flexible search
Date: 4 Jan 2006 10:10:56 -0800
Message-ID: <1136398256.032056.299030_at_g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
A long time ago I worked for an online music etailer and I had to deal with the very issue you are discussing. My method, although a bit mechanical, did the job nicely. It involved trapping search phrases and then looking for patterns. Once I discovered a pattern (Beyounce) I would then use that data to feed a pre-search that linked to the actual data (Beyouncè). This was easily implemented via stored function which took as an argument the search string which then would do a lookup on my "most searched" strings table which would point to the real record. This worked very well with both BMC's and Alliances' databsaes.
E.g) User Types: Function Maps Value to: Beyonce PK of "Beyoncè" Beyouncè PK of "Beyoncè" etc.
The "most searched" strings table was generally small and lookups were extremely fast.
I don't know the exact details of your project but I can say that this method proved to be very successfull.
TFD Received on Wed Jan 04 2006 - 19:10:56 CET