how does oracle contain query work?

Question

I have this query:

select id from mytable where contains(all_text,'('||?||' within name)*2,
('||?||' within description)',1)>0

How does the contains in the where clause work?

Thanks,

See [Stack Overflow How does contains() in PL-SQL work?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2431054/how-does-contains-in-pl-sql-work) — Appleman1234, Feb 12 '12 at 02:46

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 12 '12 at 03:47

If the first parameter occurs in the name section, then its weight is twice the weight of the second parameter occurring in the description section.

This "contains" operator will set the score variable. Without it doubling the weight has no meaning for ">0" condition. However,

SELECT id FROM mytable WHERE CONTAINS(all_text,'('||?||' WITHIN name)*2,
('||?||' WITHIN description)',1)>0 ORDER BY SCORE(1) DESC

would totally make sense and will order id's first by those rows where search term is found in the name section.

1 Answers1