full text search sql server with mistyped words

Question

We are evaluating a bunch of options at the moment for Fuzzy searches. One of our requirements is that mistyped words be matched. An OCR of CRA1G (with the number 1) must ma

Answer 1

This might not help you, but we've had this problem for names. In german, there are alot of similar sounding names: Bayer, Beyer, Baier would all sound the same. For this, we've created a seperate column using phonetic spelling. You might create a similar alphabet for your fuzziness, where "I" equals "1", and get similar results.

Answer 2

SQL Server 2008 supports thesauruses should get you to where you need. You would define your misspellings as synonyms. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142491.aspx.

Edit: To my understanding, you couldn't do this using a wildcard or regular expression approach. You'd have to define common replacement set patterns for your words that you anticipate will be most commonly mis-typed.