title: Fulltext Search with InnoDB
body: <p>I'm developing a high-volume web application, where part of it is a MySQL database of discussion posts that will need to grow to 20M+ rows, smoothly.</p>
  
  <p>I was originally planning on using MyISAM for the tables (for the built-in <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-search.html" rel="noreferrer">fulltext search capabilities</a>), but the thought of the <em>entire table</em> being locked due to a single write operation makes me shutter. Row-level locks make so much more sense (not to mention InnoDB's other speed advantages when dealing with huge tables). So, for this reason, I'm pretty determined to use InnoDB.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is... InnoDB doesn't have built-in fulltext search capabilities.</p>
  
  <p>Should I go with a third-party search system? Like <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/clucene/" rel="noreferrer">Lucene(c++)</a> / <a href="http://www.sphinxsearch.com/" rel="noreferrer">Sphinx</a>? Do any of you database ninjas have any suggestions/guidance? <del>LinkedIn's <a href="http://code.google.com/p/zoie/" rel="noreferrer">zoie</a> (based off Lucene) looks like the best option at the moment</del>... having been built around realtime capabilities (which is pretty critical for my application.) I'm a little hesitant to commit yet without some insight...</p>
  
  <p>(FYI: going to be on EC2 with high-memory rigs, using PHP to serve the frontend)</p>