oh dear - just when you thought it couldn't get any worse..
It looks like SQL Server fulltext capabilities are next to useless.
Not only does it stop working whenever you update a fulltext table (until you regenerate the index), but it has such a useless standard configuration that reference numbers with dashes are not found in the fulltext - and worse still : rather than returning 0 rows, you get an error!!! This despite the fact that the sql was valid!!
So after a whole load of work, I still don't have working search functionality for this ASP website.
Oh yeah, either the vbscript I was given to prepare the query (because you have to parse any input for fulltext queries) or sql server itself assumes anything you type in to be a phrase.
fucking useless.
Give me postgres or mysql anyday
Oh and documentation.....
have you tried finding documentation on fulltext searching in ASP - with ANY database?
searching for 'sql server fulltext search' most of the results are for PHP and/or MYSQL - nothing on SQL Server - even searching the SQL Server product site for 'fulltext' gives no results - you have to search for 'full text' and then maybe you might find one page that allows you to download a huge help file for the whole product!!
Microsoft product documentation is next to useless compared perl and mysql.
4guysfromrolla spends most of its time talking about .NET and web services and overpriced COM rubbish - nothing about text searching, fulltext or otherwise on the whole site
bah!
edited :
looks like the guys here and the t-sql help files neglected to mention the FREETEXT alternative to CONTAINS for fulltext searching.
Even using FREETEXT this is a fairly painful development process
