Boolean fulltext search across multiple MySQL tables?

Pikachu2000

Is it possible to do a fulltext boolean search in MySQL across multiple tables? If it's possible, what is the best way to accomplish it, with joins of one type or another? If not, am I stuck executing two separate queries, or am I just plain stuck? I've been racking my brain for 3 hours trying to figure this one out . . .

Any ideas/thoughts/comments/suggestions, or at this point, even insults and/or flames would be appreciated. 🙂

Pikachu2000

After messing around with this for a few more hours, and reading articles, manuals etc., I have come to the conclusion there is no real way to do what I want to do efficiently, so I've written 496 database queries in nested while{} loops to handle it . . .

Just kidding, but I do think I need to do this with multiple queries, or run a script that pulls the data I need to search and puts it all in one temporary table.

dagon

In such a situation I created a search table, that gathered the contents I needed from the other tables (php script did the gathering), then i did full text searches on that. This may or may not work depending on your circumstances.

Pikachu2000

Yeah, it's either gonna be that, or a permanent relationship table. Might have to do some restructuring at some point, but for now I think I've got a workable solution with conditionals and multiple queries.