Finding words in content.
WHAT PATTERN MATCHING PROVIDES
Simple matching, usable with an index only without a leading wildcard.
WHY A LEADING WILDCARD IS FATAL
It forces a scan of every row.
WHAT FULL-TEXT INDEXING PROVIDES
Word-based searching, with relevance ranking.
WHAT IT HANDLES
Multiple words Stemming, in some configurations Ranking by relevance
WHAT IT DOES NOT HANDLE WELL
Misspellings Synonyms Very short words, frequently excluded Languages it was not configured for
WHAT MINIMUM WORD LENGTH SETTINGS CAUSE
Short terms returning nothing, confusingly.
WHAT STOP WORDS ARE
Common words excluded from the index.
WHY THAT SURPRISES USERS
Searching for a common phrase returns nothing useful.
WHAT A DEDICATED SEARCH ENGINE PROVIDES
Far better relevance, tolerance of misspelling, faceting and scale.
WHAT IT COSTS
Another system to operate, and keeping it synchronised.
WHEN TO MOVE TO ONE
When search quality is a product feature rather than a convenience.
WHAT TO DO BEFORE THEN
Use full-text indexing properly, and set expectations.
WHAT TO ALWAYS ENFORCE
That search results respect permissions.
WHY
Search is a common route to exposing data the interface hides.
WHAT TO MONITOR
Searches returning nothing.
