Intermedia is incredibly powerful, and yet, aD ACS classic could barely use it, with searches limited mostly to a single ORing of keywords. It didn't use the stemming, the dictionaries, the phrase stuff at all.
Don got bboard searches working on the OpenACS using standard db table search (is that right?)
Another approach might be for OpenACS to incorporate an open source search engine, using perhaps htdig or swish.
The argument appears to be that since your content is mostly in the db, the db is the best place for searches. The counter argument is who cares? Nothing is available that can't be found via a link, so IF a search engine can be found that can search selected portions of your site, and/or get urls with appropriate query parameters, then just use that. (In much the same way, the ACS doesn't reimplement mail, it just delegates the task to qmail.)
What is the OpenACS 4 (5) approach to searching?
