[Koha-devel] fulltext searches

[Tonnesen Steve]

IRC Discussion about fulltext searches:

http://www.haz.cmsd.bc.ca/cgi-bin/kohalog.pl?date=15Jan03&refresh=&firstline=24&lastline=90&eventid=18


The one caveat I found is that search terms of three characters or less
are discarded.  So if you do a fulltext search for "rabbit fur" you will
get results regarding rabbits, but with no relevance placed on the word
fur.  Also, doing a fulltext search for the word "fur" will always return
0 hits.  Searching for "furs" may return some hits, because it is a four
letter word.

In my current setup, I am using "like" searches if one or more search
terms are three letter words, and fulltext searching if all search terms
are longer than 3 letters.

Just something to be aware of.

The database I'm working on has about 600,000 records (almost 2,000,000
items), and initial "like" style searches complete in about 10 seconds or
less, while fulltext searches complete in under 2 seconds.  I don't know
how fair this comparison really is as I used "car" for my like-style query
nd "cars" for my fulltext query, but it gives you an idea of the
difference in speed.  I've also got caching working, so subsequent
searches on the same term (ie looking at page 2 of the results) complete
in under a second.


Steve.