Jay Miller is looking for strings in all the wrong places:
I like to think of this like seeing a doctor. You can go to a family doctor and they can help you with most things. For specific results, it’s better to see a specialist who has a better understanding of the particular issue.
Search is the same way. At the end of the day, you get results but what you put into your search will affect what you get. That said there are some search methods that work better than others depending on your data.
Read on for several techniques that are available. I do think the headers denigrate LIKE/iLIKE a bit too much, as it works pretty well in many circumstances. But there are definitely good times to bring out the more powerful mechanisms, as this article shows.