FREETEXT (Transact-SQL)

column_name

Is the name of one or more full-text indexed columns of the table specified in the FROM clause. The columns can be of type char, varchar, nchar, nvarchar, text, ntext, image, xml, varbinary, or varbinary(max).

column_list

Indicates that several columns, separated by a comma, can be specified. column_list must be enclosed in parentheses. Unless language_term is specified, the language of all columns of column_list must be the same.

*

Specifies that all columns that have been registered for full-text searching should be used to search for the given freetext_string. If more than one table is in the FROM clause, * must be qualified by the table name. Unless language_term is specified, the language of all columns of the table must be the same.

freetext_string

Is text to search for in the column_name. Any text, including words, phrases or sentences, can be entered. Matches are generated if any term or the forms of any term is found in the full-text index.

Unlike in the CONTAINS and CONTAINSTABLE search condition where AND is a keyword, when used in freetext_string the word 'and' is considered a noise word, or stopword, and will be discarded.

Use of WEIGHT, FORMSOF, wildcards, NEAR and other syntax is not allowed. freetext_string is wordbroken, stemmed, and passed through the thesaurus.

freetext_string is nvarchar. An implicit conversion occurs when another character data type is used as input. In the following example, the @SearchWord variable, which is defined as varchar(30), causes an implicit conversion in the FREETEXT predicate.

Copy

USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
DECLARE @SearchWord varchar(30)
SET @SearchWord ='performance'
SELECT Description 
FROM Production.ProductDescription 
WHERE FREETEXT(Description, @SearchWord);

Because "parameter sniffing" does not work across conversion, use nvarchar for better performance. In the example, declare @SearchWord as nvarchar(30).

Copy

USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
DECLARE @SearchWord nvarchar(30)
SET @SearchWord = N'performance'
SELECT Description 
FROM Production.ProductDescription 
WHERE FREETEXT(Description, @SearchWord);

You can also use the OPTIMIZE FOR query hint for cases in which a non-optimal plan is generated.

LANGUAGE language_term

Is the language whose resources will be used for word breaking, stemming, and thesaurus and stopword removal as part of the query. This parameter is optional and can be specified as a string, integer, or hexadecimal value corresponding to the locale identifier (LCID) of a language. If language_term is specified, the language it represents will be applied to all elements of the search condition. If no value is specified, the column full-text language is used.

If documents of different languages are stored together as binary large objects (BLOBs) in a single column, the locale identifier (LCID) of a given document determines what language is used to index its content. When querying such a column, specifying LANGUAGE language_term can increase the probability of a good match.

When specified as a string, language_term corresponds to the alias column value in he sys.syslanguages (Transact-SQL) compatibility view. The string must be enclosed in single quotation marks, as in 'language_term'. When specified as an integer, language_term is the actual LCID that identifies the language. When specified as a hexadecimal value, language_term is 0x followed by the hexadecimal value of the LCID. The hexadecimal value must not exceed eight digits, including leading zeros.

If the value is in double-byte character set (DBCS) format, Microsoft SQL Server will convert it to Unicode.

If the language specified is not valid or there are no resources installed that correspond to that language, Microsoft SQL Server returns an error. To use the neutral language resources, specify 0x0 as language_term.

Full-text predicates and functions work on a single table, which is implied in the FROM predicate. To search on multiple tables, use a joined table in your FROM clause to search on a result set that is the product of two or more tables.

Full-text queries using FREETEXT are less precise than those full-text queries using CONTAINS. The SQL Server full-text search engine identifies important words and phrases. No special meaning is given to any of the reserved keywords or wildcard characters that typically have meaning when specified in the <contains_search_condition> parameter of the CONTAINS predicate.

FREETEXT is not recognized as a keyword if the compatibility level is less than 70. For more information, see sp_dbcmptlevel (Transact-SQL).

Full-text predicates are not allowed in the OUTPUT clause when the database compatibility level is set to 100.

Comparison of LIKE with Full-Text Search

A. Using FREETEXT to search for words containing specified character values

USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
SELECT Title
FROM Production.Document
WHERE FREETEXT (Document, 'vital safety components' );
GO

B. Using FREETEXT with variables

USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
DECLARE @SearchWord nvarchar(30);
SET @SearchWord = N'high-performance';
SELECT Description 
FROM Production.ProductDescription 
WHERE FREETEXT(Description, @SearchWord);
GO

Tasks

Reference

Concepts