Querying SQL Server Using Full-Text Search

SQL Server provides a suite of full-text predicates (CONTAINS and FREETEXT) and rowset-valued functions (CONTAINSTABLE and FREETEXTTABLE) for writing full-text queries. This section introduces these predicates and functions and describes the different types of searches you can perform using them. It also discusses how to tune and optimize full-text queries.

In This Section

• Full-Text Predicates and Functions Overview
  Introduces and compares the full-text predicates (CONTAINS and FREETEXT) and functions (CONTAINSTABLE and FREETEXTTABLE).

• Supported Forms of Query Terms (Full-Text Search)
  Contains information about the forms of queries by full-text search and the support provided for each form by the full-text predicates and rowset-valued functions.

• Limiting Ranked Result Sets (Full-Text Search)
  Discusses the optional top_n_by_rank parameter to return only a subset of rows that satisfy a query using the CONTAINSTABLE or FREETEXTABLE function. Also, contains information about how full-text search generates the rank values returned by a query

• Querying varbinary(max) and xml Columns (Full-Text Search)
  Discusses the use of CONTAINS and FREETEXT predicates to search full-text indexes on columns of varbinary, varbinary(max), xml, or image data.

• Querying Multiple Columns (Full-Text Search)
  Discusses using the CONTAINS predicate to query multiple columns.

• Querying Linked Servers (Full-Text Search)
  Discusses the requirements for using four-part names in CONTAINS or FREETEXT full-text predicates to execute queries against linked servers.

• Performance Tuning and Optimization of Full-Text Queries
  Discusses recommendations to increase full-text query performance.

See Also

Reference

Concepts