Query/Search builder controls for MVC3 application?

Question

I have a requirement for our web app to have a fairly sophisticated "search engine" that will allow users to specify some criteria for doing searches on our database.

What I need is for the user to set up their search criteria from a set of drop down boxes. This will include >, <, !=, == logical conditions as well as being able to group (AND and OR) multiple conditions together.

Examples I've seen

• The search engine inside VS2010 when searching for TFS tickets is great (although is not a web app)
• http://opl.bibliocommons.com/search

There are a ton of websites out there with this search functionality, so rather than re-invent the wheel, I'd have thought there might be some off-the-shelf components and/or techniques that I can look at - however I'm having trouble finding such things.

Can anyone suggest some controls we might look at for this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Lucene is one of the most common and best. They have made a .Net version.