Re: Retrieving partial field values

[Jigal van Hemert]

From: "Kentucky Families"

> A full-text search won't work. Too many records -- at least 8 million.
From what I've read, full-text won't pick up the individual initials or very
short names, like Vu, Lee, Doe, etc.

You can set the ft_min_word_len in an option file in the [mysqld] section to
change the minimum word length (rebuild the full text indexes afterwards!)

Maybe alter the data a bit?
If you store only firstnames you can search for J* to pick up an initial.
If you only know initials simply use Jxzx as a first name (and let your
application filter out the xzx part)
If a name is shorter than four letters add xzx to the name and filter out in
the application that shows the data.

Regards, Jigal.