Yes there is a way,however you need to define on which all fields to consider....

Use orm method, "name_search"... in this you can query stating on which all fields you want to perform the search....

In Standard, in Product object they had done these kind of search... say you want to search a product by product name / code etc...

Technical Hint: use Ctrl + H, if you are working in IDE such as eclipse, aptana studio, to search for sample codes in the addons folders

Thank you for you reply, though I am not quite sure how to modify the "name_search" method in the product module in order to add further fields to the search. Could you give an example of how to modify the code, e.g. to include the field "foo" in the search?