Note, I am not looking for opinions but examples from someone who has done this.
We have a database of ~20,000 persons. We currently use Examine/Lucene to index the names and allow searching by a freeform text field where a user could enter a first name, last name or both. We are looking to improve results as the Lucene fuzzy search is not quite meeting our needs.
We are looking to invest in the Peacock nickname database and add it to our existing SQL Server database. I am wracking my brain on how best to use this nickname data.
I could combine the first name with the possible nicknames and index that in the search collection. But would that be any faster than if I kept the separate in the index? How about just performing a SQL query against the names/nicknames and not use Lucene?