Question

I’m trying to write a full text search using a near proximity term with a max distance.

From what I can tell of the grammer…

    <custom_proximity_term> ::= 
  NEAR ( 
     {
        { <simple_term> | <prefix_term> } [ ,…n ]
     |
        ( { <simple_term> | <prefix_term> } [ ,…n ] ) 
      [, <maximum_distance> [, <match_order> ] ]
     }
       ) 

      <maximum_distance> ::= { integer | MAX }
      <match_order> ::= { TRUE | FALSE } 

…I should be able to use NEAR like such:

'NEAR(term1,term2,5)'

OR

'NEAR((term1,term2),5)'

However always throws a syntax error.

Syntax error near '(' in the full-text search condition 'NEAR((term1, term2), 4, TRUE)'.

Even when i try to copy the exact search from a microsoft Example it throws an error:

USE AdventureWorks2012
GO

SELECT DocumentNode, Title, DocumentSummary
FROM Production.Document AS DocTable 
INNER JOIN CONTAINSTABLE(Production.Document, Document,
  'NEAR(bracket, reflector)' ) /* doesn't like this */ AS KEY_TBL
  ON DocTable.DocumentNode = KEY_TBL.[KEY]
WHERE KEY_TBL.RANK > 50
ORDER BY KEY_TBL.RANK DESC
GO

Syntax error near '(' in the full-text search condition 'NEAR(bracket, reflector)'.

Answer 1

For SQL 2012(Denali) – The syntax can be a little confusing but if you look at the grammar closely, when using maximum_distance or match_order the terms(simple/prefix) have to be surrounded by additional parentheses.

So, to do a simple NEAR search you would use –

SELECT * FROM CONTAINSTABLE(Production.Document, Document, 'NEAR(bracket, reflector)')

and to limit the distance and/or match order you would use –

SELECT * FROM CONTAINSTABLE(Production.Document, Document, 'NEAR((bracket, reflector), 1, TRUE)')

I just noticed the SQL2008 tag. ‘NEAR’ is handled differently in that release. What you probably want to use there is ‘term1 NEAR term2’.