dictionary concept - thoughts on how to do plz!

[Dan Nash]

Hi peeps

My client has had the brainwave (hmm) of having a Google stylee search on
his Contact database. Basically, he wants a free text search for the Contacts
DB. But it's slightly more complicated than that.

Each contact could be possible linked to a Project, and each Project is in
an area of work (for example, education). It's easily to link so you can find
contacts related to project. But what he wants to do is allow the Google
search to work with this, so they might type "education" and instead of
searching the Contacts DB for the word Education, it goes "ah yes, you want
all contacts involved with education projects".

I thought about creating some sort of XML file as a dictionary, with a word
(say "Education") and an attached WHERE clause (ie "IN PROJECT =
'Education'"). If I did those as partial where clauses, you could search for
contacts who worked on education projects, who are called Keith. By typing
for example...

Education Keith

Is an XML file the best way? Or perhaps a list in the database? It needs to
be updatable, in case they have any more things they want to search on.

Or is there a completely different, much better/simpler way of doing
this?!!? Any thoughts appreciated!

Cheers
Dan