# Sphinx - only for string based search?

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/sphinx-only-for-string-based-search/2074>\
**Category:** Sphinx & Full-Text Search\
**Created:** [April 29, 2008, 12:57pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sphinx-only-for-string-based-search/2074 "2008-04-29T12:57:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![razdaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b5a626/32.png) [@razdaman](https://forums.percona.com/u/razdaman)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2008, 12:57pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sphinx-only-for-string-based-search/2074/1 "2008-04-29T12:57:14Z")

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“Generally, it’s a standalone search engine, meant to provide fast, size-efficient and relevant fulltext search functions to other applications.”  
(From [sphinxsearch.com](http://sphinxsearch.com))

Does this mean that the sphinx engine only should be used when string based searches? Or would it also be able to boost performance of for example “SELECT user\_id FROM users WHERE age BETWEEN 20 AND 26 ORDER BY last\_login”?

Thanks in advance )

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**Author:** ![debug](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/debug/32/772_2.png) [@debug](https://forums.percona.com/u/debug)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 11:16pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sphinx-only-for-string-based-search/2074/2 "2008-05-05T23:16:05Z")

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Sphinx is a full-text search engine, not SQL server ) It can’t speed up such queries.

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**Author:** ![razdaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b5a626/32.png) [@razdaman](https://forums.percona.com/u/razdaman)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2008, 2:05am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sphinx-only-for-string-based-search/2074/3 "2008-05-06T02:05:08Z")

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That was what I thought.

Thanks for the “confirmation”! cool: