Repository List / pgestraier / trunk / Tutorial.pod @ HEAD

=head1 pgestraier Tutorial

This tutorial will try to show how easy it is to replace SQL
constructs that use C<< where column like '%something%' >>
with external full-text index using
L<Hyper Estraier|http://hyperestraier.sourceforge.net/>.

In less then 10 minutes from installation to fill-text search-able table
(speed may vary somewhat, but it's really fast).

=head2 Installation

  $ sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.1 postgresql-server-dev-8.1 \
	libdbd-pg-perl
  $ sudo cpan Search::Estraier

=head2 Compilation

  $ cd pgestraier
  $ sudo make install

This will just install library at right place without running tests or examples.

=head2 Creating full-text index

Let's assume you have database called C<content> in which you have table
C<new> which has fields title, lead, content, keywords and source which
should be search-able.

You will have to do:

  $ ./bin/pgest-index.pl content --create news > search.sql

That's it. Really. You will even get example SQL query to shoehorn into
your application.

You can now connect to database using psql, edit search string in
C<search.sql> and try your new full-text index.

However, you will notice that we indexed B<every> field in table news,
which is wasteful (because other fields are ids of various things,
booleans and fields which aren't interesting for full-text search).

So, we can do better:

  $ ./bin/pgest-index.pl content --create news \
  	--sql="select id,title,lead,content,keywords from news"

We added custom SQL query which will be used to produce full-text index and
triggers so that we touch only columns in which we are really interested.

This time around that it! Enjoy.

For all available options see L<pgest-index> documentation.