What is the best way to implement a substring search in SQL?

Question

We have a simple SQL problem here. In a varchar column, we wanted to search for a string anywhere in the field. What is the best way to implement this for performance? Obvio

Answer 1

I you want to match whole words, look at a FULLTEXT index & MATCH() AGAINST(). And of course, take a load of your database server: cache results for a appropriate amount of time for you specific needs.