ONLamp.com: MySQL FULLTEXT Searching

“Have you ever wanted to search text stored in your database,
but couldn’t figure out how to do it efficiently? Are you lazy like
me and don’t enjoy maintaining reverse indexes, dictionaries, and
word scores? You’re in luck. The release of MySQL 4.0 has made
searching text stored in databases available to the masses.

“MySQL has had FULLTEXT searching in one form or another since
version 3.23.23. FULLTEXT indices in MySQL allow database
administrators and programmers to designate any character-based
field (CHAR, VARCHAR, or TEXT) as a FULLTEXT index, which allows
for complex text searching against data stored in those fields.

“This feature is not to be confused with the LIKE function in
MySQL. LIKE works more along the lines of a regular expression. On
the other hand, FULLTEXT indices are fully indexed fields which
support stopwords, boolean searches, and relevancy ratings…”

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