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Databases Intermediate

What is Full-Text Search?

A technique for searching natural language text in databases using word stemming, ranking, and relevance scoring.

Full-text search goes beyond simple LIKE queries. It tokenizes text into words, applies stemming (running → run), removes stop words (the, is, at), and ranks results by relevance. PostgreSQL provides built-in tsvector/tsquery types.

Features include phrase search, proximity search, weighted columns, and fuzzy matching. PostgreSQL's GIN indexes accelerate full-text queries. For more advanced needs, dedicated search engines like Elasticsearch or Meilisearch offer additional features.

Related Terms

Vacuum
A PostgreSQL maintenance operation that reclaims storage from dead tuples and updates statistics for the query planner.
Redis
An open-source, in-memory data store used as a database, cache, message broker, and queue with sub-millisecond response times.
View
A virtual table defined by a SQL query that provides a simplified or restricted view of data from one or more tables.
JSONB
PostgreSQL's binary JSON data type that stores JSON documents with indexing, querying, and manipulation capabilities.
Time-Series Database
A database optimized for storing and querying timestamped data points like metrics, sensor readings, and event logs.
SQL
Structured Query Language — the standard language for managing and querying data in relational databases.
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