Question

in my current project, the task is to be able to search through 6 tables.

Tables are:
A, B, C, D, E, F

All tables are related to each other through another table in the list.

E.g. A->B B->A->C C->F F->D

Like User->Phonenumber Phonenumber->Country etc.

Since the searchmask/form the user gets presented leaves the possibility open to send only certain parameters to the server it occurs that the search must find a result R no matter which parameter the user passes through.

In this case a parameter is a column value of any of the above listed tables, e.g. Phonenumber->Provider = Verizon means, the user wants all entries with the provider = Verizon.

The actual problem is not searching in specific tables, it is searching in specific tables an retrieving the right result from the results you found in the specific tables.

Let me explain: Result, in our case is NOT a table object of the table we currently searched through.

A Result should always be the same object Result which must have at least one entry in A and B.
Example Requirements:
A = User exists
B = he has a Phonenumber

Since all tables have relations to each other directly or indirectly we could access a result without searching for columns in A or B only by looking into the related tables retrieving the rows with Provider=Verizon and JOINing on the related tables via ids/keys/constraints.

Currently I do more than one query.
I first check the type of the parameters.
“Are they columns from A to C”
Yes, then do a direct SELECT on A, B or C and take the result as Result.

“Are they columns from E”
Yes, then do a SELECT on E, after that another SELECT on C with c_id from E.

As Result (in PHP) I always want to have an object/array containing A.value1, B.value1
I never want any information about C, D, E or F.
I only want to get Result consisting of A.value1 and B.value1 by any allowed/searchable parameter that is represented in a column in one or more of the tables, e.g. Provider=Verizon AND Country=China AND OnVaccation=True

I am sorry for the complexity.

Answer 1

I think, for this you could use Sphinx Search Engine at http://sphinxsearch.com/ . You should set up SQL query which will be used for building search index. After this from PHP you could use simple API for performing search.