Re: Similarity Search with Wildcards

[Ken Tanzer <ken.tanzer@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not sure about the indexing and performance impacts, but I think you could use SUBSTRING with a regex to pull out the client name, and then match on that.

 SELECT substring('Client Name - Description' FROM '^(.*) [-]');

  substring  

-------------

 Client Name

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Ghislain Hachey <ghachey@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 02/28/2013 06:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:

On 2/27/2013 10:35 PM, Ghislain Hachey wrote:

I have a varchar column with content such as "Client Name - Brief Description of Problem" (it's a help desk ticket system). I want to generate reports by clients and the only thing I can base my query on is this column. The client names often contain typos or are entered slightly differently. I installed the pg_trgm extension and it almost does what I want. The problem is that it searches the similarity of the whole field and not just the client name resulting in not so similar searches (I include my query below).

why isn't client name a separate field??   thats the logical approach

I know, but the system and the workflow of the staff is already in place. I was hoping to get something quick with minimal changes. I was also hoping to understand more how wildcards can be used with pg_trgm. Otherwise, I will add a field and modify the app.

Thanks,

--
GH

--

AGENCY Software  

A data system that puts you in control

100% Free Software

http://agency-software.org/

ken.tanzer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(253) 245-3801

Subscribe to the mailing list to

learn more about AGENCY or

follow the discussion.