MySQL Full-Text Search

MySQL full-text search is an efficient way to perform complex searches within the text data stored in the database.

The MySQL full-text search allows you to search natural language text rather than matching patterns. It goes beyond the traditional LIKE operator and regular expression searches.

The LIKE operator is commonly used for basic string pattern matching with the support of simple wildcard characters such as % (matches any sequence of characters) and _ (matches any single character. The LIKE is simple but may not be efficient for complex text searches on large datasets.

The regular expressions (regex) offer complex and flexible search patterns so that you can control the search criteria in greater detail. However, constructing and interpreting regex patterns can be complex. Similar to the LIKE operator, the regex has performance issues with large datasets.

MySQL full-text search uses a sophisticated algorithm that considers word relevance, word proximity, and the context of the search terms to provide more accurate results.

MySQL full-text search supports advanced search features such as boolean operators, phrase searches, and sorting the search result by relevance. In addition, it comes with built-in stopword removal and enables custom dictionaries and word stemming for enhanced search capability.

More importantly, the full-text search is optimized for large datasets and generally faster than the LIKE operator and regular expressions.

MySQL full-text search features

The following are some key features of MySQL full-text search:

• Native SQL-like interface: Provides the SQL-like statement to perform full-text searches.
• Fully dynamic index: Updates the index of the text column automatically whenever the data of that column changes.
• Moderate index size: The size of a FULLTEXT index is relatively small.
• Speed: It is fast to search based on complex search queries.

Notice that MySQL supports a full-text index only for MyISAM and InnoDB tables.