Advanced search with Drupal (Views and CCK)

Question

I'm building a site where products are hold in a content type created with CCK. Products can be associated with multiple taxonomy vocabularities. Now I need an advanced product search which user could use to search by many search arguments (taxonomy terms, CCK field values). I have done quite a lot googling but I haven't been able to find a flexible enough module.

I have been able to create almost all needed features with Views' arguments but haven't been able to find a way to make the search form without my own custom search box. This isn't really the solution I'm looking for.

The question(s) follow: Is there a proper module for flexible custom searches or is an own module the only way? Is there a module for argument form for Views.

Answer 1

There is a "Faceted Search" module (http://drupal.org/project/faceted_search) that offers an interesting concept of search, also applicable to CCK fields too. You can see a demo here. It rather offers you to select existing value sets (facets) and browse them elegantly, but still it's a search. (Use together with http://drupal.org/project/cck_facets)