This is one of those posts that’s for me to remember (cause I always forget it) and perhaps could come in handy for you too. From time to time I need to setup Full Text Indexing (yes I know there’s lots of alternative) and I hate using the IDE if I don’t have to.
Setting Up Full Text Indexing
sp_fulltext_database 'enable' –-need to have SP3 installedIF EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM sys.fulltext_catalogs WHERE name = N'my_catalog_name') DROP FULLTEXT CATALOG my_catalog_nameGO CREATE FULLTEXT CATALOG my_catalog_nameGOIF EXISTS( SELECT * FROM sys.fulltext_indexes JOIN sys.tables ON sys.tables.object_id = sys.fulltext_indexes.object_id WHERE sys.tables.name = 'table_name') DROP FULLTEXT INDEX ON table_nameGOCREATE FULLTEXT INDEX ON table_name (column1,column2,column3) KEY INDEX PK_table_name –-this is the name of the PK, not the column ON table_name WITH CHANGE_TRACKING AUTOGOALTER FULLTEXT INDEX ON table_name START FULL POPULATION
This will start population of the index. There’s a whole bunch of ways to query it, but the easiest is using FREETEXT and FREETEXTTABLE.
Querying
The easiest query is something like this:
SELECT table_name.column1, table_name.column2, KEY_TBL.RANK FROM table_name INNER JOIN FREETEXTTABLE(table_name, search_column, 'query value') AS KEY_TBL ON table_name.primary_key = KEY_TBL.[KEY] ORDER BY Rank DESC
