MATCH

For columnstore tables created with a FULLTEXT index, the text columns in that table can be searched by using the MATCH AGAINST syntax.

The result of the MATCH statement is a relevancy score between 0 and 1, which indicates the quality of the match. A score closer to 1 indicates a higher quality match, while a score closer to 0 indicates a lower quality match.

Important

To include recent inserts/updates from the hidden rowstore table in with the results, run OPTIMIZE TABLE tbl_name FLUSH before running your query.

Refer to Working with Full-Text Search for more conceptual information on this feature.

Syntax

The full-text search MATCH syntax is:

MATCH (<column1>,<column2>,...) AGAINST (<expression>)

The columns specified in a MATCH clause must be from the same table . Additionally, full-text search works best over English text and is case-insensitive.

Operators

The AGAINST expression consists of a mix of text with zero or more of the following operators.

Operator

Description

(no operator)

When no operator is specified, the word is optional; however, the rows that contain it are rated higher.

+

A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each row returned.

-

A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the rows that are returned. Note: The - operator acts only to exclude rows that are otherwise matched by other search terms.

NOT

The NOT operator behaves the same as the - operator. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT. The NOT operator must be in all caps.

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND. The expression A AND B is equivalent to +A +B. The AND operator must be in all caps.

OR

The OR operator behaves the same as not having any operator between words. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR. The OR operator must be in all caps.

()

Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.

*, ?

See the Wildcard support section below.

""

A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (") characters matches the words in the quotes as if it is a single word. If the phrase contains no words that are in the index, the result is empty. The words might not be in the index because of a combination of factors: if they do not exist in the text, are stopwords, or are shorter than the minimum length of indexed words.

~

The tilde symbol is used to support fuzzy searches. To do a fuzzy search, use the tilde symbol at the end of a single-word term. For example, to search for a term similar in spelling to roam use the fuzzy search: roam~.

Note

SingleStore supports only constant expressions (search filters) inside the AGAINST clause, for example, a regular expression like (Stock*) or a constant string like "DBC". You may use external application software, or stored procedures with dynamic SQL, to substitute in different AGAINST expressions at runtime.

Stopwords

Certain words are ignored by full-text search due to their commonality resulting in less relevant results. These are called stopwords. SingleStore’s default list of stopwords is as follows:

a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, 
of, on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with

Wildcard Support

Single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms are supported (not within phrase queries).

To perform a single character wildcard search use the ? symbol and to perform a multiple character wildcard search use the * symbol.

The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for text or test you can use the search: te?t

Multiple character wildcard searches looks for zero or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search: test* You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term. te*t

Important

Neither ? or * are supported at the beginning of a term. For example, searching for "?ello" or "*ello" will generate an error.

Special Characters

Depending on the use case, FULLTEXT matching may not always be compatible with match expressions involving special characters. This is because the default tokenizer for SingleStore’s FULLTEXT removes special characters from the search. The current list special characters are:

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

Relevancy Score

The relevancy score of an expression in a MATCH statement denotes the ranking of the expression based on the following factors:

  • Number of times an expression appears in a column. More occurrences of an expression in the matched column(s) increases its relevancy score.

  • Rarity of the expression. Rare words have a higher relevancy score than commonly used words.

  • The length of the column containing the expression. A column with a short expression has a higher relevancy score than a column with a long expression.

Full-Text Legacy Version 1 Examples

Create a Table with a Full-Text Index

CREATE TABLE articles (
id INT UNSIGNED,
year int UNSIGNED,
title VARCHAR(200),
body TEXT,
SORT KEY (id),
FULLTEXT (title, body));

Use a SQL Predicate

SELECT count(*)
FROM articles
WHERE year = 2017 AND MATCH (body) AGAINST ('memsql');

Search for the Word database across Two Columns

SELECT * FROM articles
WHERE MATCH (title,body)
AGAINST ('database');

Use a Single Operator

SELECT title
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH (title) AGAINST ('Database OR "Business Intelligence"');

Use Multiple Operators

The following example returns the title of an article that contains either database or Business Intelligence and the string real-time analytics in the body. As '-' is a special character, results for both real time and real-time will be included.

SELECT title
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH (title) AGAINST ('Database OR "Business Intelligence"')
AND MATCH(body) AGAINST ("real-time analytics");

Use a Wildcard

This example uses the wildcard ’*’ to return all articles with titles starting with the word Journal such as Journalism, Journalist, Journals, and so on.

SELECT *
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH(title) AGAINST ('Journal*');

Create a Relevance Score as an Output Column

SELECT id, title, MATCH(body) AGAINST ('database') relevance
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH(body) AGAINST ('database');

Search with a Specific Relevance Score

SELECT id, title, MATCH(body) AGAINST ('database')
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH(body) AGAINST ('database') > .12;

UPDATE or DELETE Queries

UPDATE articles set name = concat(name,".DATABASE") where MATCH(body) AGAINST ('database');
DELETE from articles where MATCH(body) AGAINST ('database');

Last modified: October 2, 2024

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