Full Text Search Gets Explained

October 6, 2015

Full text search is a one of the primary functions of most search platform.  If a search platform cannot get full text search right, then it is useless and should be tossed in the recycle bin.    Full text search is such a basic function these days that most people do not know how to explain what it is.  So what is full text?

According to the Xojo article, “Full Text Search With SQLite” provides a thorough definition:

“What is full text searching? It is a fast way to look for specific words in text columns of a database table. Without full text searching, you would typically search a text column using the LIKE command. For example, you might use this command to find all books that have “cat” in the description…But this select actually finds row that has the letters “cat” in it, even if it is in another word, such as “cater”. Also, using LIKE does not make use of any indexing on the table. The table has to be scanned row by row to see if it contains the value, which can be slow for large tables.”

After the definition, the article turns into advertising piece for SQLite and how it improves the quality of full text search.  It offers some more basic explanation, which are not understood by someone unless they have a coding background.   It is a very brief with some detailed information, but could explain more about what SQLite is and how it improves full text search.

Whitney Grace, October 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph

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