CakePHP’s database abstraction is just one of the reasons to use this powerful framework for agile web development. However, it is not always obvious how to build complex queries. I recently had to implement a MySQL full text search against a music database that searched on titles, descriptions and tags. Full text search is a quick, and not too dirty way to make a pretty decent search, although it does come with a caveat, as described in the MySQL documentation:
Full-text indexes can be used only with
MyISAMtables, and can be created only forCHAR,VARCHAR, orTEXTcolumns.