Confucius247 (10/7/2008)
More time talking about a c# compiler than the SQL. No talk of the limitations of the FTS.
The article is not about the limitations of FTS, of which information abounds. A lot of these limitations are overcome in SQL 2008 iFTS, however. I didn't feel a strong need to rehash FTS limitations to demonstrate how to provide your users with a simpler interface to FTS.
Bit of a waste of time really.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
From title of piece I was hoping for something about combining site useage stats stored in SQL with the FTS results to actually make something Google like. Google is not defined by its syntax, which few users use, but by the relevancy of its results.
Combining site usage states stored in SQL with FTS results? I'm not sure what led you to believe this particular article addressed that, and I'm sorry you're disappointed. However, if relevance of results is important (and of course it always is) there are several opportunities to increase relevance in FTS. For instance you can use the proximity search to increase relevance (implemented in the grammar) or weighted seraches (not implemented in the grammar). FTS also provides relevance ranking via CONTAINSTABLE and FREETEXTTABLE. Unfortunately in a corporate intranet setting there's little chance you can duplicate Google's ability to count links back to a specific document or page to calculate a Google-style relevance score.
As for "few users" using Google syntax, I strongly disagree. Google is the world's most popular search engine, and I would expect that nearly everyone who has used a Web-based search engine has at some point used Google. I would further venture that most users are familiar with the basics of Google syntax, which is why I recommend using it rather than forcing users to learn iFTS syntax to manually enter queries like the following:
"aluminum" AND (FORMSOF(INFLECTIONAL, fish) OR FORMSOF(THESAURUS, money))
The reasons for providing users with a simple syntax are discussed in the article.
Thanks
Mike C