Adding words to SQL Server Full Text Stemmer

Question

I've dug around for a few hours now and cannot find an option to do this. What I would like to do is to add words to the stemmer used by Full Text in SQL Server. I work for an agency that would like to search on variations of names. In other words, if an officer enters the name of "Bill" I would also get a hit on "Will" or "William". Anyone know if this is possible?

I did look at implementing a custom IStemmable interface but that seems a bit of an overblow solution to this problem. Does anyone know of an easier way or have an off the shelf solution that will do this?

Thanks...

Answer 1

In SQL Server 2K5 or 2K8 it is called the "Thesaurus". Well doced in MSDN etc

It handles things like these

    <expansion>
        <sub>Internet Explorer</sub>
        <sub>IE</sub>
        <sub>IE5</sub>
    </expansion>
    <replacement>
        <pat>NT5</pat>
        <pat>W2K</pat>
        <sub>Windows 2000</sub>
    </replacement>
    <expansion>
        <sub>run</sub>
        <sub>jog</sub>
    </expansion>

Answer 2

Sigh....

Thanks. One of those times I was definitely trying to make it more difficult then it needed to be. I think I found stemmer early on and kept using it in my searches.

Thanks again.