Thread

1. soundex more or less exact

   Christian Guenther <guenther@laokoon.in-berlin.de> — 1998-06-01T18:02:56Z

   Hi, 
   
   How can I make the soundex-function more or less exact finding results.
   
   If I have a name 'Fretwurst' and search for 'Vretwurst' I do not get the
   'Fretwurst' as result. Is it possible to get it right, because for me
   Vretwurst is near by Fretwurst?
   
   Sorry about the terrible English.
   
   
   Thanks for any hints
   
   Christian Guenther
   -- 
    Christian Guenther         http://laokoon.in-berlin.de/Kuenstler/ 
    Fax: +49 030 4464152       http://laokoon.in-berlin.de/Museum/
    Tel: +49 030 4442931       E-mail: guenther@laokoon.in-berlin.de
   
   

2. Re: [SQL] soundex more or less exact

   Herouth Maoz <herouth@oumail.openu.ac.il> — 1998-06-02T07:54:03Z

   At 21:02 +0300 on 1/6/98, Christian Guenther wrote:
   
   
   > How can I make the soundex-function more or less exact finding results.
   >
   > If I have a name 'Fretwurst' and search for 'Vretwurst' I do not get the
   > 'Fretwurst' as result. Is it possible to get it right, because for me
   > Vretwurst is near by Fretwurst?
   
   Soundex is not a magic wand. It is a generic name for a function that maps
   words that sound the same to one root. But "sound the same" in which
   language? I once wrote a soundex function for Arabic. Believe me, it is
   nothing like English soundex. It may be tempting to use English soundex for
   German - after all, they use the same character set, more or less. But
   since pronounciation of "V" and "F" and "W" is different, and I think
   there's also some difference in "S", the way things *sound* is different.
   It may not be as far as Arabic is from English, but it's enough to render
   the function invalid for practical purposes.
   
   That's the theory. In practice, I believe the soundex in PostgreSQL is a
   contributed module. So if you have programming skills, you may want to
   follow the sources, see how they work, and change the function to apply
   German logic rather than English logic. Then you can contribute your own
   version as "german_soundex" or whatever.
   
   Herouth
   
   --
   Herouth Maoz, Internet developer.
   Open University of Israel - Telem project
   http://telem.openu.ac.il/~herutma