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[ifarfan at netzero.com]

Hi,

Not sure if this helps (this is my first post!) but you may want to look at the SOUNDEX function in MySQL (All major DB vendors provide it, too). Here's a link:

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/String_functions.html

The soundex listing reads:
SOUNDEX(str)
    Returns a soundex string from str. Two strings that sound almost the same should have identical soundex strings. A standard soundex string is 4 characters long, but the SOUNDEX() function returns an arbitrarily long string. You can use SUBSTRING() on the result to get a standard soundex string. All non-alphanumeric characters are ignored in the given string. All international alpha characters outside the A-Z range are treated as vowels:

mysql> SELECT SOUNDEX('Hello');
        -> 'H400'
mysql> SELECT SOUNDEX('Quadratically');
        -> 'Q36324'

MS-SQL also has a DIFFERENCE function that compares the difference of the SOUNDEX pattern results between 2 strings.

-- Using DIFFERENCE
SELECT DIFFERENCE('Smithers', 'Smythers')
-- The difference returned is 4 (lowest possible difference).


Hope this helps...

Cheers,

Israel F.




> I just pulled in a gig (finally).  They are building a literary
> reference guide. 
 > 
> Well, while planning they hit me with something I'm not too versed in.
> They want to eventually have something they called "fingerprint"
> searching.  The term alone meant nothing to me (beyond the obvious -
> which google agreed with).
 > 
> Basically it has something to do with using synonyms and misspellings
> and all types of other fun algorithms to find what a user is looking
> for.  Does anyone hear have any experience with such things, or maybe
> know where to look?
>  
> Thanks!!
>  
> Mark