Full Text Search

In text retrieval, full text search refers to techniques for searching a single computer-stored document or a collection in a full text database. Full text search is distinguished from searches based on metadata or on parts of the original texts represented in databases (such as titles, abstracts, selected sections, or bibliographical references).

In a full text search, the search engine examines all of the words in every stored document as it tries to match search criteria (e.g., words supplied by a user). Full text searching techniques became common in online bibliographic databases in the 1990s. Many web sites and application programs (such as word processing software) provide full-text search capabilities. Some web search engines such as AltaVista employ full text search techniques while others index only a portion of the web pages examined by its indexing system.

Read more about Full Text Search:  Indexing, The Precision Vs. Recall Tradeoff, False-positive Problem, Performance Improvements, Software

Famous quotes containing the words full, text and/or search:

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    And from that full meridian of my glory
    I haste now to my setting. I shall fall
    Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
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    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)

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    Anthony Lewis (b. 1927)