Force users to normalize 1

[lbrechler]

Hi all,

I have a table named TOPIC, set up as follows:

TOPIC_NAME | TOTAL
---------------------------------------------
test | 5
name | 4
java | 9
vb | 12

In my program, users are asked to enter a topic. What I'd like to do is to go through the TOPIC table, and see if anything matches or resembles, and then suggest that to them instead, so that I can get more accurate counts. For instance, with the example above, if they enter "testing", I'd like to say "Is this the same as 'test'? Type yes to change the topic name, or no to save a new topic" so that I can keep a more accurate tally in TOTAL -- otherwise, I can see tons of TOTALs of "1".

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am using Oracle 9i, and have (VERY briefly) tried playing around with relevancies and wildcards...

Thanks in advance,
~Lindsay

 

[r937]

seems like you have some sort of front end to accept user input

why not just create a dropdown menu of existing topic names, and make the last one "other" with a text field beside it -- this is pretty common on web pages and other GUIs

i would allow the users to decide "if anything matches or resembles" rather than software

rudy

http://rudy.ca/

 

[lbrechler]

Would that it were that easy....

My front end for this portion is text-based. Listing out all the topics (which I expect will probably get quite large) would take too much space and would probably scare users (I'm picturing: "Your options are: " and then scrolling screens of text...).

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it will work in my case.

Any way to do this with the user-entered, free form input?

 

[angiole]

I concur with lbrechler.
Our local library will only provide the first 50 hits on a word, since the person querying should be focused on what he's looking for.

You might try to determine the amount of unique words in the title of the books(?), and list these as check boxes (if you can) at the users' end. AA 8~)

 

[r937]

hey, no fair, your example showed 4 rows and now all of a sudden there are too many to list |

okay, let the user enter whatever she wants, then you run a query using one of these ideas:

~ soundex (google for more info)

~ LIKE '%term%'

~ SUBSTR(term,6) or whatever part of the front you want

et cetera