[thelist] Ranking search results

[Matthew Walker]

> Just to refresh the topic because I see no-one's taken it up, I'm also
> really interested to see how this is done. Anyone ever had any experience
> doing this?
>
> I've been thinking about it, and the only thing I can think of is to get
> multiple record sets back from the database and then rank them.
> The problems
> are:

I've done this by getting a query and then just doing all the work in a
server-side language. Calculating a score for each result is easy. Trouble
is sorting the result. Unless you can implement a good search routine, the
sorting can be real slow, as in seconds. Basically, you're really best to
get the database to do it if at all possible. That ain't an answer, but it's
definitely a tip.