Searching (with reference to schema)

To Ryan, regarding fulltext indexes:
The problem with (my/postgres/MS etc) SQL fulltext index searching is that it 
is very, very slow. My proposal wasn't just for the idea of having a fulltext 
index, but rather an outline for a fast implementation optimised for this 
database (or any database where records have a fixed-width primary key) (read 
the spec I wrote ;) ). I've gotten my copy of the existing perl fulltext 
search working (in the CVS tree) and it's well done, but still a ways off 
optimal speedwise (and it generates huge index files, as they are essentially 
plain text)

I'll be putting a prototype of my indexer and searcher together over the 
weekend (based on the spec I outlined in the dev board), but I don't have the 
net after tomorrow, so I may have to upload it from a friend's place midweek, 
or next weekend, if the friend in question isn't available :) ...

Anyway, I'll treat characters as 32-bit, to make it UTF-8 friendly; words 
will be delimited by whitespace or punctution, except for words with an 
apostrophe, which will be keyed twice: once as the word with the apostrophe 
removed, once as the longest bit between apostrophy and whitespace; the 
module will consist of C functions which do the actual dirty work, and a 
command-line front end to test them - this will make "glueing" the functions 
into the database software easier, especially if freedb moves to another 
database format. 

My next post will be either an announcement or a rather abashed apology ;)

cya -Yuri