[thelist] searching across character sets

[John Pye]

Hello all

Our website has listings in a number of different languages: names of
products, company names in various countries etc. All this stuff displays
just fine, but I am having problems working out how to allow searching for
things when there are accented characters involved. I would like to be able
to construct the search so that results are found regardless of accents on
in the text: most our visitors are english-speaking and probably won't enter
accents in their search terms. This would be character substitution within
search queries, before a match is found.

example:
 if you search for either of
	on diseno
	on diseno
 you should find
	On Diseno

What is the best practise on this?

Are there features built into Oracle or Cold Fusion designed to solve this
problem? I have found out a little about NLS (National Language Support) in
Oracle, but haven't worked that is the right box of tricks.

I would appreciate any comments!


John Pye
http://www.creativebase.com/
+44 (0)20 7258 6900