Someone accustomed to the spelling rules of one culture can have difficulty applying those same rules to a name from a different culture. Name searching (also called name matching) provides a solution to match proper names that might differ in spelling due to orthographic variation. It also enables you to search for somewhat inaccurate data, such as might occur when a record's first name and surname are not properly segmented. The main advantage of name searching is the ability to handle somewhat inaccurate data.

The following example illustrates how to use NDATA sections to search on names:

drop table people;
 
create table people (
  full_name varchar2(2000)
);
 
insert into people values
('John Black Smith');
 
-- multi_column datastore is a convenient way of adding section tags around our data
exec ctx_ddl.drop_preference('name_ds')
begin
  ctx_ddl.create_preference('name_ds', 'MULTI_COLUMN_DATASTORE');
  ctx_ddl.set_attribute('name_ds', 'COLUMNS', 'full_name');
end;
/
 
exec ctx_ddl.drop_section_group('name_sg');
begin
  ctx_ddl.create_section_group('name_sg', 'BASIC_SECTION_GROUP');
  ctx_ddl.add_ndata_section('name_sg', 'full_name', 'full_name');
end;
/
-- You can optionally load a thesaurus of nicknames
-- HOST ctxload -thes -name nicknames -file nicknames.txt
 
exec ctx_ddl.drop_preference('name_wl');
begin
  ctx_ddl.create_preference('name_wl', 'BASIC_WORDLIST');
  ctx_ddl.set_attribute('name_wl', 'NDATA_ALTERNATE_SPELLING', 'FALSE');
  ctx_ddl.set_attribute('name_wl', 'NDATA_BASE_LETTER', 'TRUE');
  -- Include the following line only if you have loaded the thesaurus
  -- file nicknames.txt:
  -- ctx_ddl.set_attribute('name_wl', 'NDATA_THESAURUS', 'nicknames');
  ctx_ddl.set_attribute('name_wl', 'NDATA_JOIN_PARTICLES',
   'de:di:la:da:el:del:qi:abd:los:la:dos:do:an:li:yi:yu:van:jon:un:sai:ben:al');
end;
/
 
create index people_idx on people(full_name) indextype is ctxsys.context
  parameters ('datastore name_ds section group name_sg wordlist name_wl');
 
-- Now you can do name searches with the following SQL:
 
var name varchar2(80);
exec :name := 'Jon Blacksmith'
 
select /*+ FIRST_ROWS */ full_name, score(1)
  from people
  where contains(full_name,  'ndata( full_name, '||:name||') ',1)>0
  order by score(1) desc
/

The following example illustrates a more complicated version of using NDATA sections to search on names:

create table emp (
    first_name    varchar2(30),
    middle_name   varchar2(30),
    last_name     varchar2(30),
    email         varchar2(30),
    phone         varchar2(30));

insert into emp values
('John', 'Black', 'Smith', 'john.smith@example.org', '123-456-7890');

-- user datastore procedure
create or replace procedure empuds_proc
   (rid in rowid, tlob in out nocopy clob) is
     tag varchar2(30);
     phone varchar2(30);
begin
  for c1 in (select FIRST_NAME, MIDDLE_NAME, LAST_NAME, EMAIL, PHONE
             from emp
             where rowid = rid)
  loop
     tag :='<email>';
     dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(tag), tag);
     if (c1.EMAIL is not null) then
         dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(c1.EMAIL), c1.EMAIL);
     end if;
     tag :='</email>';
     dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(tag), tag);
     tag :='<phone>';
     dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(tag), tag);
     if (c1.PHONE is not null) then
       phone := nvl(REGEXP_SUBSTR(c1.PHONE, '\d\d\d\d($|\s)'), ' ');
       dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(phone), phone);
     end if;
     tag :='</phone>';
     dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(tag), tag);
     tag :='<fullname>';
     dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(tag), tag);
     if (c1.FIRST_NAME is not null) then
       dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(c1.FIRST_NAME), c1.FIRST_NAME);
       dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(' '), ' ');
     end if;
     if (c1.MIDDLE_NAME is not null) then
       dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(c1.MIDDLE_NAME), c1.MIDDLE_NAME);
       dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(' '), ' ');
     end if;
     if (c1.LAST_NAME is not null) then
       dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(c1.LAST_NAME), c1.LAST_NAME);
     end if;
     tag :='</fullname>';
     dbms_lob.writeappend(tlob, length(tag), tag);
   end loop;
  end;
  /

--list
show errors
 
exec ctx_ddl.drop_preference('empuds');
begin
  ctx_ddl.create_preference('empuds', 'user_datastore');
  ctx_ddl.set_attribute('empuds', 'procedure', 'empuds_proc');
  ctx_ddl.set_attribute('empuds', 'output_type', 'CLOB');
end;
/
 
exec ctx_ddl.drop_section_group('namegroup');
begin
  ctx_ddl.create_section_group('namegroup', 'BASIC_SECTION_GROUP');
  ctx_ddl.add_ndata_section('namegroup', 'fullname', 'fullname');
  ctx_ddl.add_ndata_section('namegroup', 'phone', 'phone');
  ctx_ddl.add_ndata_section('namegroup', 'email', 'email');
end;
/
 
-- Need to load nicknames thesaurus
-- ctxload -thes -name nicknames -file dr0thsnames.txt
-- You can find sample nicknames thesaurus file, dr0thsnames.txt, under
-- $ORACLE_HOME/ctx/sample/thes directory.

exec ctx_ddl.drop_preference('ndata_wl');
begin
   ctx_ddl.create_preference('NDATA_WL', 'BASIC_WORDLIST');
   ctx_ddl.set_attribute('NDATA_WL', 'NDATA_ALTERNATE_SPELLING', 'FALSE');
   ctx_ddl.set_attribute('NDATA_WL', 'NDATA_BASE_LETTER', 'TRUE');
   ctx_ddl.set_attribute('NDATA_WL', 'NDATA_THESAURUS', 'NICKNAMES');
   ctx_ddl.set_attribute('NDATA_WL', 'NDATA_JOIN_PARTICLES',
    'de:di:la:da:el:del:qi:abd:los:la:dos:do:an:li:yi:yu:van:jon:un:sai:ben:al');
end;
/
 
exec ctx_output.start_log('emp_log');
create index name_idx on emp(first_name) indextype is ctxsys.context
parameters ('datastore empuds section group namegroup wordlist ndata_wl
  memory 500M');
 
exec ctx_output.end_log; 
 
-- Now you can do name searches with the following SQL:
var name varchar2(80);
exec :name := 'Jon Blacksmith'

select first_name, middle_name, last_name, phone, email, scr from
   (select /*+ FIRST_ROWS */
          first_name, middle_name, last_name, phone, email, score(1) scr
    from emp
    where contains(first_name,
          'ndata(phone, '||:name||') OR  ndata(email,'||:name||') OR
           ndata(fullname, '||:name||') ',1)>0
    order by score(1) desc
   ) where rownum <= 10;