Close Matches SQL

[eluser]rogierb[/eluser]
If you have a MySQL innodb database, you could use match() against() for full-text searching.
Another approach is to do a regexp() in MySQL.

If you do use MySQL manipulating an large result can be done through a stored procedure rather then php.

A couple of techniques to filter data and get close matches is to create wordlists with matching terms like synonyms and typos. Another is regexp or filter through a script. The main problem is to get a first resultset large enough.