Re: Db design for a flexible search

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 - 12:10:56 CST