Re: search engine

[nbaj]

Re: search engine

Hi everyone,
(In Access 2000)
This sounds WAY too complicated for a novice like me, but I've been asked to create a search engine, that will sit in a form, for my database e.g. Enter your phrase in a text box, and click "search" button, and it returns all records that contain that phrase/word.

Added complications!
1)The search result should not return the entire record and every detail of it, but only certain fields
2) Outputs to a pretty looking report or something.
3) Searches everything in two different tables [one-to-many relationship with these tables]

Been right the way through my Access book and it offers no advice!! Please help!
Thanks in advance

 

[The_Doc_Man]

This sounds WAY too complicated for a novice like me

Given the description of the problem, I mean no disrespect, but I have to agree. Even if the search is limited to only one field in the DB, it is still a big bite to chew on for a novice. And you didn't say it was limited that way. The fact that it has to search another table bearing many-to-one relation with the primary makes it that much nastier.

Which is not to say it can't be done. But it is a complex problem because of the multi-table search, the formatting requirement, and the limited field output requirement.

If you really want to try it, consider a divide-and-conquer approach. Break the problem up into parts and attack the parts piecemeal. Then put the results back together later. Work on ways to generate the list of records you want to put in your report. Do the actual report later.

You will probably need to look up the "LIKE" operator as a way to do a search for arbitrary text in an arbitrary position in a field. You might also have to worry about the same record matching more than once based on how you do the searches.

 

[mcadle]

The Doc's right. Its not so much that its complicated but when all lumped together it can be. You will more than likely end up doing SQL queries with the Like operator based off of the text box entry. Give some more info and hopefully someone can get you going in the right direction.