I can't believe how much harder it is to enable fulltext on MS SQL Server than MySQL.
First I have to enable fulltext for the database. (using MySQL fulltext is enabled table by table rather than by database, this means you don't have to have as many privilidges to do it in MySQL as we as not having to muck about)
Next I have to enable fulltext, and specify which columns to index, for the table. (in mysql this is a simple alter table add fulltext name (col1,col2) with multiple indexes or even none, depending on my needs and I can add and remove them just as easily).
Next I have to regen the index. When changes are made to the table, the index isn't updated until the index is regenerated - in our case once a week. ( in mysql, any changes in the table are reflected straight away in the index ).
Finally there is the query syntax - SQL Server requires you muck about prepassing the query string and formatting it and passing it extra arguments - essentially SQL Server fulltext querying is somewhere between a storedprocedure and a function whereas MySQL fulltext query syntax is a simple syntax extension that fits in with the sql and requires no arguments or preparsing.
