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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T00:05:53+00:00

I have a simple query that relies on two full-text indexed tables, but it

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I have a simple query that relies on two full-text indexed tables, but it runs extremely slow when I have the CONTAINS combined with any additional OR search. As seen in the execution plan, the two full text searches crush the performance. If I query with just 1 of the CONTAINS, or neither, the query is sub-second, but the moment you add OR into the mix the query becomes ill-fated.

The two tables are nothing special, they’re not overly wide (42 cols in one, 21 in the other; maybe 10 cols are FT indexed in each) or even contain very many records (36k recs in the biggest of the two).

I was able to solve the performance by splitting the two CONTAINS searches into their own SELECT queries and then UNION the three together. Is this UNION workaround my only hope?

SELECT     a.CollectionID
FROM       collections    a
INNER JOIN determinations b ON a.CollectionID = b.CollectionID 
WHERE      a.CollrTeam_Text LIKE '%fa%'
           OR CONTAINS(a.*, '"*fa*"')
           OR CONTAINS(b.*, '"*fa*"')

Execution Plan:

execution plan

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’d be curious to see if a LEFT JOIN to an equivalent CONTAINSTABLE would perform any better. Something like:

    SELECT     a.CollectionID
FROM       collections    a
INNER JOIN determinations b ON a.CollectionID = b.CollectionID 
LEFT JOIN CONTAINSTABLE(a, *, '"*fa*"') ct1 on a.CollectionID = ct1.[Key]
LEFT JOIN CONTAINSTABLE(b, *, '"*fa*"') ct2 on b.CollectionID = ct2.[Key]
WHERE      a.CollrTeam_Text LIKE '%fa%'
           OR ct1.[Key] IS NOT NULL
           OR ct2.[Key] IS NOT NULL
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