Advanced Search Techniques

Abstract

The focus of this book has been on full-text search, specifically the SQL Server 2008 iFTS implementation. Full-text search falls into a class of search technologies known as fuzzy search. The main idea behind fuzzy search is that the computer should accept user requests and return what the user actually wants, which as we all know is not necessarily the same as what was asked for. While iFTS is a highly optimized and proven technology for performing fuzzy searches on documents and large blocks of textual information stored in the database, it’s not ideal for other types of searches. We’ll explore some of these additional search requirements in this chapter and provide sample code to fulfill these needs.