fuzzy search

[Scott Runkel]

> Actually, I don't need this to be too sophisticated. What I am after
> is catching users entering 'StatisticsI' (no space due to typo)
> whereas there is already a course 'Statistics I'. At most I'd like to
> find "applied statistics" when someone enters "applications of
> statistics". A keywords field could get me there at least partially I
> think. Useful idea.

If you assume that people might conjoin words, numbers etc., then you could
remove letters from the end of words before searching with something like
"SELECT * FROM table WHERE field LIKE '\AStatist' NO_CASE". That way you'd get
"Statistics I" whether they entered it as "Statistics", "StatisticsI" or
"Statistics I" etc. You could start with the full term entered, such as
"StatisticsI". If nothing was found, you could remove the last letter and search
again, and repeat that process until you got some results. Valentina is so fast
I doubt such a procedure would take very long.

I suppose the difficulty is trying to imagine many ways they might mis-enter
what they're looking for, and account for them.

-SR

Scott Runkel
Director of Technology
Hypix Media, Inc.
503-722-2123