In a full text search, a TEXT index is searched, rather than table rows. Before you can perform a full text search, you must create a TEXT index on the columns you want to search. A TEXT index stores positional information for terms in the indexed columns. Queries that use TEXT indexes are generally faster than those that must scan all the values in the table.
When you create a TEXT index, you can specify which text configuration object to use when creating and refreshing the TEXT index. A text configuration object contains settings that affect how an index is built. If you do not specify a text configuration object, the database server uses a default configuration object.
You can create TEXT indexes on these types of columns: CHAR, VARCHAR, and LONG VARCHAR, as well as BINARY, VARBINARY, and LONG BINARY. BINARY, VARBINARY, and LONG BINARY columns require that the TEXT index use a text configuration with an external prefilter library.
