The NF Research Tools Database (and the rest of the NF Data Portal) uses MySQL Full Text Search to power the search bars.
MySQL Full Text Search is very computationally and economically efficient. However, there are some limitations to consider when searching:
MySQL Full Text Search does not understand spelling errors, so please ensure that your spelling is correct.
MySQL Full Text Search does not perform “stemming” to identify the root of a word. You will have better results if, for example, you avoid pluralization or suffixes like -ing, so please search using words like “plexiform neurofibroma” instead of “plexiform neurofibromas” and avoid terms with suffixes.
MySQL Full Text Search ignores short terms that are not an exact match (4 or less characters) - so a term like “NF1” will produce results but a short term inside of another word (e.g. “grow” inside “growing”) will not.
Please DO let us know if you experience issues with the search by emailing at nf-osi@sagebionetworks.org or filing a ticket by clicking the “Need more help?” button below. This will help us understand whether we should move to more costly search solutions (e.g. ElasticSearch), or whether the current search technology is sufficient for this database.
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