MySQL – Boolean Full-text Search

Native full-text can handle all of the features you've mentioned.

• Ranking/relevance, weighting
• Word inflection and expansion
• Customisable noise words and thesaurus

Whether or not it will be the best solution for your particular domain is a tough call. Rather than attempt to hand-roll an alternative, spike a proof of concept using SQL FTS and repeat the exercise with one or more open source alternatives.

Lucene is the obvious contender to compare and comes with the "Stack Overflow search is now 81% less crappy" endorsement of the SO team.

I took the three strings in your question and added it to a table plus three more string with pankt instead of punkt.

The following was executed using MySQL 5.5.12 for Windows

mysql> CREATE TABLE artikel
    -> (
    ->     id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    ->     meldungstext MEDIUMTEXT,
    ->     PRIMARY KEY (id),
    ->     FULLTEXT (meldungstext)
    -> ) ENGINE=MyISAM;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO artikel (meldungstext) VALUES
    -> ('Punkten'),('Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung'),('Treffpunkt'),
    -> ('Pankten'),('Zwei-Pankte-Vorsprung'),('Treffpankt');
Query OK, 6 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 6  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

mysql>

I ran these queries against the table using 3 different approaches

• MATCH ... AGAINST
• LOCATE as in the LOCATE function
• LIKE

Please note the differences

mysql> SELECT id,meldungstext,
    -> COUNT(IF(MATCH (`meldungstext`) AGAINST ('*punkt*' IN BOOLEAN MODE),1,0)) PunktMatch,
    -> IF(LOCATE('punkt',meldungstext)>0,1,0) PunktLocate,
    -> meldungstext  LIKE '%punkt%' PunktLike
    -> FROM `artikel` GROUP BY id,meldungstext;
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
| id | meldungstext          | PunktMatch | PunktLocate | PunktLike |
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
|  1 | Punkten               |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  2 | Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  3 | Treffpunkt            |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  4 | Pankten               |          1 |           0 |         0 |
|  5 | Zwei-Pankte-Vorsprung |          1 |           0 |         0 |
|  6 | Treffpankt            |          1 |           0 |         0 |
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
6 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql>

All the PunktMatch values should bee 3 1's and 3 0's.

Now watch me query them as normal

mysql> SELECT `meldungstext` FROM `artikel`
    -> WHERE MATCH (`meldungstext`) AGAINST ('*punkt*' IN BOOLEAN MODE);
+-----------------------+
| meldungstext          |
+-----------------------+
| Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung |
| Punkten               |
+-----------------------+
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> SELECT `meldungstext` FROM `artikel`
    -> WHERE LOCATE('punkt',meldungstext)>0;
+-----------------------+
| meldungstext          |
+-----------------------+
| Punkten               |
| Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung |
| Treffpunkt            |
+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT `meldungstext` FROM `artikel`
    -> WHERE `meldungstext` LIKE '%punk%';
+-----------------------+
| meldungstext          |
+-----------------------+
| Punkten               |
| Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung |
| Treffpunkt            |
+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

OK using MATCH .. AGAINST with punkt does not work. What about pankt ???

mysql> SELECT `meldungstext` FROM `artikel` WHERE `meldungstext` LIKE '%pankt%';
+-----------------------+
| meldungstext          |
+-----------------------+
| Pankten               |
| Zwei-Pankte-Vorsprung |
| Treffpankt            |
+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

Let's run my big GROUP BY query against pankt

mysql> SELECT id,meldungstext,
    -> COUNT(IF(MATCH (`meldungstext`) AGAINST ('*pankt*' IN BOOLEAN MODE),1,0)) PanktMatch,
    -> IF(LOCATE('pankt',meldungstext)>0,1,0) PanktLocate,
    -> meldungstext  LIKE '%pankt%' PanktLike
    -> FROM `artikel` GROUP BY id,meldungstext;
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
| id | meldungstext          | PanktMatch | PanktLocate | PanktLike |
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
|  1 | Punkten               |          1 |           0 |         0 |
|  2 | Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung |          1 |           0 |         0 |
|  3 | Treffpunkt            |          1 |           0 |         0 |
|  4 | Pankten               |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  5 | Zwei-Pankte-Vorsprung |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  6 | Treffpankt            |          1 |           1 |         1 |
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
6 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql>

This is wrong also because I should see 3 0's and 3 1's for PanktMatch.

I tried something else

mysql> SELECT id,meldungstext, MATCH (`meldungstext`) AGAINST ('+*pankt*' IN BOOLEAN MODE) PanktMatch, IF(LOCATE('pankt',meldungstext)>0,1,0) PanktLocate, meldungstext  LIKE '%pankt%' PanktLike FROM `artikel` GROUP BY id,meldungstext;
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
| id | meldungstext          | PanktMatch | PanktLocate | PanktLike |
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
|  1 | Punkten               |          0 |           0 |         0 |
|  2 | Zwei-Punkte-Vorsprung |          0 |           0 |         0 |
|  3 | Treffpunkt            |          0 |           0 |         0 |
|  4 | Pankten               |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  5 | Zwei-Pankte-Vorsprung |          1 |           1 |         1 |
|  6 | Treffpankt            |          0 |           1 |         1 |
+----+-----------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

I added a plus sign to pankt and I got different results. What 2 and not 3 ???

According to the MySQL Documentation, notice what it says about the wildcard character:

*

The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.

If a word is specified with the truncation operator, it is not stripped from a boolean query, even if it is too short (as determined from the ft_min_word_len setting) or a stopword. This occurs because the word is not seen as too short or a stopword, but as a prefix that must be present in the document in the form of a word that begins with the prefix. Suppose that ft_min_word_len=4. Then a search for '+word +the*' will likely return fewer rows than a search for '+word +the':

The former query remains as is and requires both word and the* (a word starting with the) to be present in the document.

The latter query is transformed to +word (requiring only word to be present). the is both too short and a stopword, and either condition is enough to cause it to be ignored.

Based on this, the wildcard character is applicable for the back of tokens and not for the front. In light of this, the output must be correct because 2 of the 3 punkt's start tokens. Same story with pankt. This at least explains why 2 out of 3 and why less rows.