Question

I’m developing an Iphone App where the user types in any string into a searchbar and presses the search button. After that a result list should appear.

In my SQLite I have four columns a, b, c, d. Let’s say they have the following Values:

Dataset 1:
a: code1
b: report1
c: description1_1
d: description1_2

Dataset 2:
a: code2
b: report2
c: description2_1
d: description2_2

So if the user enters a value of: “1_1” then the first dataset will be selected because of clumn c.
If the user enters a value of: “report” then the first and second dataset will be selected.

As I’m using a database with nearly 60.000 Datasets searching for a part-string is really killing the performance.

Setting an index at all 4 columns will make the size of the SQLite database much too huge.
So I didn’t use an index at all.

My Select Statement looks like this:

NSString *sql = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"SELECT * FROM scode WHERE a LIKE '%@%@%@' OR c LIKE '%@%@%@' OR d LIKE '%@%@%@'", wildcard, searchBar.text, wildcard, wildcard, searchBar.text, wildcard, wildcard, searchBar.text, wildcard, wildcard, searchBar.text, wildcard];

Is there any good way to enhance the performance of searching for a part-string in all columns?

Thank you and kind regards,

Daniel

Answer 1

You’re after Full Text Searching, which SQLite doesn’t natively support. I don’t have any experience with 3rd party support, but based on results there are a few options.