Question

I’m trying to perform a CONTAINS query with multiple terms over multiple columns, like this:

SELECT ID
FROM Table
WHERE CONTAINS((Data1,Data2,Data3), '"foo" & "bag" & "weee"')

However, this query does not behave like I want it to: I want it to return all records for which all terms appear at least once in at least one of the columns, like this:

SELECT ID
FROM Table
WHERE CONTAINS((Data1,Data2,Data3), '"foo"')
AND CONTAINS((Data1,Data2,Data3), '"bag"')
AND CONTAINS((Data1,Data2,Data3), '"weee"')

While this query returns the correct results, it needs a separate AND-clause for every term. Is there a way to express the same query with a single where-clause like in the upper example? This would be convenient when including the query in a (fixed) function.

Answer 1

SQL Server once behaved this way, but it was considered a bug and “corrected”.

You need to create a FULLTEXT index on a computed column:

DROP TABLE t_ft
CREATE TABLE t_ft (id INT NOT NULL,
        data1 NVARCHAR(MAX) NOT NULL, data2 NVARCHAR(MAX) NOT NULL, data3 NVARCHAR(MAX) NOT NULL,
        totaldata AS data1 + ' ' + data2 + ' ' + data3,
        CONSTRAINT pk_ft_id PRIMARY KEY (id))

CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX ON t_ft (totaldata LANGUAGE 1033) KEY INDEX pk_ft_id

INSERT
INTO    t_ft
VALUES  (1, 'foo bar', 'baz', 'text')

INSERT
INTO    t_ft
VALUES  (2, 'foo bar', 'bax', 'text')


SELECT  *
FROM    t_ft
WHERE   CONTAINS (*, 'foo AND baz') 

In MySQL, on the contrary, the fulltext index searches and matches across all columns and this is a documented behavior.