Inconsistent search interface for Advanced Search/Contact Reference fields

[JonGold]

When:
* Using Advanced Search's "Complete OR Partial Name" field; and
* Inputting two or more words (e.g. "John Smith")

You get back everyone whose name matches John OR Smith.  E.g. John Jones or Alice Smith.  This is NOT the same behavior as Quick Search.  I tried changing the "automatic wildcard" setting, which predictably had no effect.

Aside from the inconsistency between Quick Search and Find Contacts/Advanced search/Contact Reference lookups, it makes it near impossible to search for certain contacts - for instance, a health organization in California can't look up "California Department of Public Health".  The search builder is a partial solution, but doesn't resolve the issue for contact reference lookups.

I have to imagine this is a more computationally intensive SQL search - so I'm wondering if there's an argument for it?  I think it would be better for a search for "John Smith" to return just "John Smith" and "John Smithson".

[Coleman Watts]

Are you talking about this issue? https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15442
I'm not exactly sure what you're saying - are you saying the fix I did for entityRef was good or bad, or should be applied to adv search as well?

[JonGold]

Coleman - the issue I'm talking about is implied by CRM-15442, yes.  As you said in your comment, the problem would be best fixed at a lower level.  I can see the hesitancy to do so in a point release, but it would be an excellent fix for 4.6.  Also, I tested on a copy of master that was updated 10/21/14 - but I'm not seeing changed behavior on a Contact Reference.  Do contact reference lookups not use EntityRef?  I sort of assumed they were BUILT for contact references

[Coleman Watts]

Might just be that we haven't merged changes upstream lately.