SQL Server Full Text Search Results differs from Like statement

Question

Hi everybody

I tried these two methods on Advantureworks and got different results.

1. select * from Person.[Address] where AddressLine1 like '%99%'
2. select * from Person.[Address] where contains(Address.AddressLine1,'"*99*"')

Any Idea?

Answer 1

Full text search and LIKE are two completely different things:

• LIKE works on strings of characters and matches exactly.
• CONTAINS works on words and is somewhat fuzzy (how the strings are broken up into word parts depends on the language and can be customized even further if needed).

Answer 2

Does fulltext search support suffix terms (i.e. wildcard before the term)?