I have a simple application that allows users to enter a string to search for a name in a database. The server side is ColdFusion 7. The issue I'm having is that a query such as "obrien" does not return entries with the name "o'brien."
I think what I want is fuzzy matching capability. After doing some research I've also come across full text search which might be what I'm looking for; however, I'm not sure about the difference between the two. ColdFusion has a service called verity, but it seems I have to first query all of the database, and then index it--this sounds very costly.
Is there a built-in way to do fuzzy matching or full text search in ColdFusion without first querying the entire database? If not, when doing full text search, do I have to specify the indexes? For example, obrien should index to "obrien, o'brien, o'brein"?
What about trying to use the SOUNDEX founction? I don't think there is any easy answer here.