Re: Minivend <-> MySql problems

[mikeh@minivend.com]

Quoting Russ (russ@khouse.org):
> 
> Searching with mySQL and minivend is seemingly untrodden territory, seeing
> as how no matter how many questions I ask about searching the mySQL
> database, no one seems to have useful information.

It is no wonder -- none of the SQL databases operate consistently, 
and what works for MySQL will not necessarily work for Oracle or
Sybase.

The SQL search in MiniVend is a lowest-common-denominator approach
based on ANSI SQL-92. As far as I know, there are no specs for:

	-- case sensitivity
	-- LIKE and what will match with 'word', '%word', 'word%', '%word%' 
	-- creation of indices
	-- conditions spanning multiple tables

For instance, searches on MySQL are case-insensitive by default. If
you want to search case-insensitive on Oracle, you must do the equivalent
of "WHERE lower(field) = lower('String')".

Trying to support the idiosyncrasies of 20 different SQL databases is
more than I care to take on. As Larry said, "therein lies the road to madness".

That is why I recommend exporting your databases to an ASCII text file and
using MV's search engine for keyword-based searching. Category searches,
etc. work fine on SQL; you can specify them easily. But you don't want
to use it to do form-based searches, IMHO.

-- 
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