MySQL full-text search in Rails?

Question

When I added search functionality to my first Rails app, I used Sphinx, after reading that using MySQL's built-in fulltext search was a bad idea. While Sphinx works well, it's a bit complicated to set up, and I feel there's too much overload for the simple searching functionality I require in my app.

Searches aren't performed very often on my site (at most one search every 3-4 seconds), so I'm not too worried about load.

My question: Why exactly is using MySQL's full text search a bad idea, compared to Sphinx/Ferret/Solr/etc..?

Answer 1

The top answer here seems to at least partially answer your question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/737275/pros-cons-of-full-text-search-engine-lucene-sphinx-postgresql-full-text-search