FULLTEXT vs like

[Sops21]

I have an interesting problem. I need to do a search across multiple columns. I was going to use fulltext for this, but a lot of the keywords are going to be 2-3 characters. I can change the msql setting "ft_min_word_len" to 2 and I believe this will allow for searching of keywords of 2 characters.

My other alternative is going to be using concat_ws or concat and use a like %% statement. From what I've read, this can be very slow using a like statment with wildcards.

Am I going to run into problems changing ft_min_len to 2? I would assume that my index is going to grow quite big, but I'm not that worried about that as space is not an issue.

Any thoughts?

[sneakyimp]

I would say this depends on the size of your DB. If you have 1 MB or less data, you could probably get away with using LIKE. If your database is several hundred MB, then you'll need indexes for decent performance.

Or something like that. It sort of depends more on the detail of your db.

[dagon]

i would try LIKE benchmark it, if its to slow go to Fulltext. it will be dependent on your hardware\software\data\bandwidth\ etc.. so there's no real way any one here could ever give a definitive answer