MySQL Bugs: #6397: Cannot search for ALL of the words

Bug #6397	Cannot search for ALL of the words
Submitted:	3 Nov 2004 8:22	Modified:	15 Dec 2005 0:07
Reporter:	Sergei Kulakov (Candidate Quality Contributor)	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Websites: bugs.mysql.com	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	current	OS:	internet
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
Your bug search page http://bugs.mysql.com/search.php only allows to search bugs with ANY of the words entered. There is no AND option. When I want to submit a bug on Left Join I can't search for just "Left Join", I have to search for either "Left" or "Join", which is ridiculous. If I search for "Left" I find 103 entries, and if I search for "Join" I find some 160 entries. So I select the less evil and scan through the 103 entries to fnd those with "left join". There could be just 15 of them. 

This is amazing how the search page can be so primitive with a site like this!

How to repeat:
http://bugs.mysql.com/search.php, see above, you can use any words

Suggested fix:
Personally I developed natural text search subsystems for Russian language using so called "inverted files" both in programs (exe) and in an internet site, and both of them allowed users to use AND, OR and brackets for grouping, let alone NOT, "*" to find all words beginning with a string and considering Russian words' endings. 

It isn't that hard to implement. For convenience, a space means AND and a comma means OR.

Select a Boolean search, and add + to each word.

http://bugs.mysql.com/search.php?search_for=%2Bleft+%2Bjoin&boolean=on&cmd=display&status=...

But that's not obvious at all. There's no search help on the site. Or do you mean people are supposed to know what boolean mode means because they use MySql's fulltext search capabilities and because you use the capability to search bugs on your site (again, who knows that?) so they know what boolean mode means and that they ashould add "+" before each word to make it AND. I guess you should have a search help page there. I never used fulltext searches - just didn't have to - and I think far not eveybody did, so they may have no idea of the underlying capabilitites of your search page. And they should as successful searching for a bug prevents reporting a duplicate one.

Especially misleading is the text "with ANY of the words" - it makes one believe there's no way to search for ALL of the words.

I agree, a little text describing this "boolean mode" will not hurt.
(at least, a link to http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/fulltext-boolean.html)

There is a link to information on the Boolean mode operators now.