MySQL has fulltext index search ability for text field, but it is word based index: it cannot be used for no word delimiter language like Japanese or Chinese. It also can't search characters in the middle of a word (e.g. searching 'in' will not match word 'ping'). Starting from MySQL 5.1, MySQL supports a plugin that allows to change server components (fulltext search parser) without restarting and/or recompiling the server. This n-gram parser uses this plugin interface to implement a simple n-gram (bi-gram) fulltext index parser which can be used for languages without word delimiters. WWW: http://mysqlbigram.googlepages.com/