Re: FULLTEXT

[Brent Baisley]

I'm an ex-Lasso developer, using PHP now. More of a pricing issue than 
anything else.

1) Are you trying to combine 15 columns together into one full text 
index? It sounds like you are trying to setup freeform searching on 
structured data. If you really need to do this you might want to think 
about embedding data "structure" into your TEXT field. Make sure you use 
something that you can parse out easily for display. Then you would have 
one field that stores most of your data that can allow searching for a 
word anywhere or in a specific context.
For instance, if you store your data with "labels" you can search your 
full text index with those labels:
SELECT * FROM Contacts WHERE MATCH(data) AGAINST ('"::fname::Steffan"')
or without to find the text string anywhere
SELECT * FROM Contacts WHERE MATCH(data) AGAINST ('Steffan')

2) The default is to not index 3 or less letter words, which is already 
what you desire. But you can recompile to change it to what you want. 
I'm pretty in v4 you don't have to recompile MySQL, just rebuild you 
indexes.

3) I don't this would be desirable.

Perhaps if you described what you are trying to accomplish we could come 
up with an alternative way of going about it. Are you trying to 
replicate the way FileMaker handles indexes where all indexes are full 
text and you can have just about as many (255?) as you want? Don't 
forget about the "HAVING" option of a SQL query which doesn't use 
indexes, but is probably almost as fast as FileMaker for large text 
field searches.

On Sunday, December 8, 2002, at 06:43 PM, Steffan A. Cline wrote:

>     I am a member of the Lasso list and heard this would be a good 
> place to
> ask about a few things about MySQL.
>
> 1. In a few places I read about FULLTEXT searches. In one place I saw it
> said 16 columns and in another 15. But, I am finding that when using 
> 15 I
> get an error but then go down to 14 and all is well. One of these I am
> searching is a TEXT field. Does this eat up 2 VARCHAR columns in the
> FULLTEXT?
>
> 2. Is there a way in maybe a rebuild of the code to change from 4 or 
> more
> letters in the FULLTEXT search to 3 or more? I noticed on the FULLTEXT 
> page
> someone commented on this.
>
> 3. Almost the same as above but is there a way to increase the number of
> columns for a FULLTEXT search?
>
--
Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577