Full text search Sql Server 2008 question

Question

Hi,

Let's say I have the following string stored in a column which has full-text:

xx 3 555 7 4

My question is why a search using FREETEXT for the word '555' would not return anything

Answer 1

You can't use full text search on numbers :( You can try using LIKE, although performance may be an issue. Another thing that you can try is encapsulating the search term in double-quotes, although I don't think that will help you here.

One other thing that you can try... add "NN" to the start of your search term. So, instead of searching for '555', try searching for 'NN555'. Supposedly MS does store the numeric words in the index, but it appends "NN". That was back in SQL 2005. I don't know if it still holds true in 2008.

Answer 2

Try creating the fulltext index using the LANGUAGE [NEUTRAL] option.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187317.aspx

Create Fulltext Index On YourTable (YourColumn Language [Neutral])
Key Index YourKey;