From: Shadowfirebird <shadowfirebird@...>
Date: 2011-03-14T18:21:27+09:00
Subject: Re: best search method

Excerpts from Dave Lilley's message of Mon Mar 14 08:58:23 +0000 2011:
> I've got a small contact mysql database and need to do a soundex type of
> search.
> What I'd like to get some feed back on this idea...

Never done this in Ruby so there may be a better way.   But why not actually use Soundex?

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex#Rules for the encoding rules.  It's not too hard.  

To speed things up, store the soundex version of the name on the database (or a different database if it's not yours.  Doesn't have to have the same table, just have enough fields to help you find the unique record in that table.)

So all you have to do when you have a name to match is convert that name to soundex, then compare that with the soundex values on the database.

Hope that helps...

-- 
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