[thelist] Ranking search results

[Steve Cook]

Well, to continue one of the list's most spread out threads :-) I found this
the other day on www.asptoday.com

Searching for multiple words with rating in an Access Database -
http://www.asptoday.com/articles/20000315.htm

This has certainly given me some good ideas and shows the basic concept for
how one gives ranking in SQL (using an empty field in your result set and
using SQL to generate a value for number of hits into that field and then
sorting on the field.).

Clever stuff and it certainly helps me down the road I was aiming for.

Let me know if anything else pops up.

.steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Houston. [mailto:chris at phosphors.net]
> Sent: den 13 september 2000 10:50
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: Re: [thelist] Ranking search results
> 
> 
> Steve Cook typed:
> 
> > has anyone got links to some examples of how to program 
> ranked search
> > result queries? I know this is a really deep field, but 
> it's the base
> > concepts I'm looking for.
> >
> > Currently I can perform a search and get results sorted in 
> various ways
> > by my SQL statements, but how do I for instance, count the number
> > of search terms in a result and then rank the results accordingly.
> >
> > I imagine some heavy programming ahead!
> 
> 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:
> 
> 1) If you're looking for 3 search terms across 5 fields you'd 
> get need to
> get 15 record sets back.
> 2) Items showing up multiple times must be reduced to one 
> item with a higher
> ranking.
> 3) This really should be done in SQL.
> 
> Chris Houston.
> 
> Creative Director
> Phosphors Intermedia.
>