PostgreSQL provides a full text search capability, which is used to overcome SQL pattern matching operators, including LIKE
and ILIKE
, boosting the performance of the text search. For example, even though an index on text using the text_pattern_op
class is supported, this index cannot be used to match a non-anchored text search.
Another issue with the traditional LIKE
and ILIKE
operators is the ranking based on similarity and natural language linguistic support. The LIKE
and ILIKE
operators always evaluate a Boolean value: either as TRUE
or as FALSE
.
In addition to ranking and non-anchored text search support, PostgreSQL full text search provides many other features. Full text search supports dictionaries, so it can support language, such as synonyms.