I need to enhance the search algorithm on a ColdFusion 8 and MSSQL 2005 based website that I've developed and have been maintaining for several years.
The website interfaces with an MSSQL database full of books (ie: title, description, isbn, author, keywords, etc.) and currently doesn't do that great of a job yielding search results. The algorithm is weak, and doesn't really go beyond looking for exact matches or using "contains" to check for keyword instances. So, .. I need to improve upon this algorithm somehow.
One of the things that's been mentioned by my client is that the search functions aren't very forgiving of misspellings, .. or of word omissions when searching for book titles. I believe that these types of enhancements, if possible, would be the ideal place to start.
I'm looking for some ColdFusion / MSSQL based examples of some clever search algorithms. Nothing is out of the question (ie: using stored procedures, .. using verity, .. purchasing and installing 3rd party software or custom tags, etc) -- though if possible, I would like to start with simpler enhancements that can be handled at the code level (ColdFusion scripting and database queries). Any relevant code examples, or links to meaningful resources would be appreciated.
Thanks!
- Yvan
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I recommend you take a look at ColdFusion's built-in Verity search api:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/
Verity is an excellent feature of ColdFusion that makes it pretty easy to create extensible collections of the data you seek whether it be actual pages, or data in databases. It is pretty configurable and has a lot of the features you are seeking such as the recognition of misspellings and providing alternate search terms.
You should also probably look into SOUNDEX(). I think there are several free versions of it and even improved SOUNDEX() algorithms (that take slightly more space). But it's still pretty slick. I think the phone company uses similar technology so when you ask for "Johnson" it can find "Johhson", "Johnston", etc..
Remmuh -- Thank you for pointing me to the resources pertaining to coldfusion verity, I've managed to to produce a working example of a simple search of my collection, though I am now struggling with the highlighting of keywords as it relates to case sensitivity.
I understand that the search criteria must be provided in either all upper or all lower case in order for the search to be case insensitive. However, I am trying to highlight the keywords in my search results using coldfusion's replace function, and am encountering a problem where the replace functions are being case sensitive, and not highlighting the keyword instances unless they match the case exactly.
For example, .. searching for the word "Florida" brings up search results which contain the word "florida" in them (ie: all lower case) but it doesn't highlight them (as well as vice versa):
http://www.thebookco.com/t
http://www.thebookco.com/t
Below is my code. Please advise.
Thanks!
-- Yvan
<cfsearch name = "searchResults" collection = "BookInventory" criteria = "#LCASE(URL.keyword)#">
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
<!--
span.keyword {background-color: yellow}
//-->
</STYLE>
<cfoutput query="searchResults">
<CFSET newTitle = #Replace(#custom1#, "#URL.keyword#", "<span class=keyword><strong>#keywor
<CFSET newDesc = #Replace(#custom2#, "#URL.keyword#", "<span class=keyword><strong>#keywor
#newTitle#<br />
#newDesc#
<hr>
</cfoutput>
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by: EugeneZPosted on 2009-01-06 at 07:33:01ID: 23305304
what is wrong with your Full-text search catalogs?
see more about FTS functions: http://technet.microsoft.c
--
if your search fields not big you can try to use 'Like' operator: http://technet.microsoft.c
check spelling solutions::
http://www.bpur
http://livedocs.adobe.com/