# Oracle text search

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 6, 2008, 2:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687 "2008-06-06T02:23:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed655f/32.png) [@matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/matthew)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 2:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687/1 "2008-06-06T02:23:15Z")

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Hi,

I’ve been asked to move an application to Oracle.

It uses Ferret drb for text search [& its been really stable thank you  
very much].

Any one have any thoughts on how to do text searching in Oracle?

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**Author:** ![matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed655f/32.png) [@matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/matthew)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 4:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687/2 "2008-06-06T04:01:36Z")

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Matt S.1 wrote:

> I’ve been asked to move an application to Oracle.
> 
> It uses Ferret drb for text search [& its been really stable thank you  
> very much].
> 
> Any one have any thoughts on how to do text searching in Oracle?

Write a cron job that reads Oracle and writes Ferret every day, and  
trigger this  
cron in some kind of “update” mode when specific new data come in.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed655f/32.png) [@matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/matthew)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 4:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687/3 "2008-06-06T04:38:08Z")

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Phlip wrote:

> Matt S.1 wrote:
> 
> > I’ve been asked to move an application to Oracle.
> > 
> > It uses Ferret drb for text search [& its been really stable thank you  
> > very much].
> > 
> > Any one have any thoughts on how to do text searching in Oracle?
> 
> Write a cron job that reads Oracle and writes Ferret every day, and  
> trigger this  
> cron in some kind of “update” mode when specific new data come in.

Thanks Phlip,

Yep, that would work.

I guess I was hoping that oracle had its own elegant text search  
features that could be accessed by rails, possible via stored  
procedures.

- matt.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed655f/32.png) [@matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/matthew)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 5:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687/4 "2008-06-06T05:08:18Z")

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> > Write a cron job that reads Oracle and writes Ferret every day, and  
> > trigger this  
> > cron in some kind of “update” mode when specific new data come in.

> I guess I was hoping that oracle had its own elegant text search  
> features that could be accessed by rails, possible via stored  
> procedures.

If you do it my way, you can deploy the feature first. Then you would  
have lots  
of time to research the awesome toy that is Oracle, without making your  
clients  
wait for their feature. Software development should always be  
incremental - even  
if you must temporarily degrade performance just to avoid rewriting too  
much.

Your network admins might ask about your new CPU load, though… (-:

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed655f/32.png) [@matthew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/matthew)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 12:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/oracle-text-search/139687/5 "2008-06-07T00:35:56Z")

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> I’ve been asked to move an application to Oracle.
> 
> It uses Ferret drb for text search [& its been really stable thank you  
> very much].
> 
> Any one have any thoughts on how to do text searching in Oracle?

You might want to look into Oracle Text.  
[http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/text/index.html](http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/text/index.html)  
[http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/asplund-textsearch.html](http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/asplund-textsearch.html)