knowledge base search

[Evoir]

When I go to the knowledge base
http://service.futurequest.net/?_a=knowledgebase

and type: DNS it returns no results. Yet, this (http://service.futurequest.net/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=16&nav=+%26gt%3B+%3Ca+href%3D%27index.php%3F_a%3Dknowledgebase%26_j% 3Dsubcat%26_i%3D6%27%3EDomain+Names%3C%2Fa%3E) entry exists.

[Bob]

Hello Evie,

The Knowledgebase Article search function requires 4 chars if I recall correctly, which I also believe is a Kayako core setting.

-Bob

[Randall]

The Knowledgebase Article search function requires 4 chars if I recall correctly, which I also believe is a Kayako core setting. I hate it when they do that. If I wanna search for the letter "e," who are they to tell me it's too short? :rasberry: The search term you specified (*e*) is under the minimum word length (4) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer.

If this term contains a wildcard, please make this term more specific. You can go ahead and call me a moron before you run the search, show me only x number of results and then insult me again at the end just for the sake of completeness, but don't hassle me with these arbitrary limits. Sheesh. :rolleyes:

Randall

[Joseph]

Actually the 4 Letter limit is a restriction set by MySQL's Full Text Search (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/fulltext-search.html) feature, which is what most of these programs use, as it's much faster and less resource intensive. :)

[Evoir]

It would be nice if the application gave an error, instead of a "no results" message.

[NoahM]

Never new about the MySQL search limitation, but I have always disliked the search minimum of 4 since I seem to run into it on sites where I am searching for a file type which happens to be 3 characters.

[Wassercrats]

It's not really a restriction.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/fulltext-fine-tuning.htmlThe minimum and maximum lengths of words to be indexed are defined by the ft_min_word_len and ft_max_word_len system variables. (See Section 5.2.3, “System Variables”.) The default minimum value is four characters; the default maximum is version dependent. If you change either value, you must rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes.

[kitchin]

MySQL full-text indexes have other unexpected limits, like normally any word that appears in more than 50% of the records is not matched (maybe override with "+" as in "+searchword"). Also, about 500 common words (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/fulltext-stopwords.html) are stop words and are never indexed. You can work around all this by using wildcards and string searches, though it's probably slower. You the developer can work around it, that is, not you the user.

[Jeff]

What is the performance hit on the server by changing the minimum word length from 4 to 3?

[Arthur]

and type: DNS it returns no results. It does now :smile:

The minimum word length has been lowered to 3 and the full-text indexes have been rebuilt.

-Arthur

[Evoir]

:)