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Simple Searches

Specifies a match for an exact word (one or more characters without spaces or punctuation) or a phrase (one or more consecutive words separated by spaces and optional punctuation). Examples of valid simple terms are blue berry, blueberry, and Microsoft SQL Server. Phrases should be enclosed in double quotation marks (""). Words in a phrase must appear in the same order as specified in as they appear in the database column. The search for characters in the word or phrase is case insensitive. Noise words (such as a, and, or the) in full-text indexed columns are not searched. If a noise word is used in a single word search, an error message indicating that only noise words are present in the query is returned. For a list of noise words, click here. Punctuation is ignored. Therefore, computer failure matches a row with the value, "Where is my computer? Failure to find it would be expensive."

Wildcard Searches

Specifies a match of words or phrases beginning with the specified text. Enclose a prefix term in double quotation marks ("") and add an asterisk (*) before the ending quotation mark, so that all text starting with the simple term specified before the asterisk is matched. The clause should be specified this way: "text*".The asterisk matches zero, one, or more characters (of the root word or words in the word or phrase). If the text and asterisk are not delimited by double quotation marks, the search engine considers the asterisk as a character and will search for exact matches to text*.

When the term is a phrase, each word contained in the phrase is considered to be a separate prefix. Therefore, a query specifying a prefix term of "local wine *" matches any rows with the text of "local winery", "locally wined and dined", and so on.

Proximity Searches

Specifies a match of words or phrases that must be close to one another. This operates similarly to the AND operator: both require that more than one word or phrase exist in the column being searched. As the words in your search appear closer together, the better the match.

NEAR | ~

Indicates that the word or phrase on the left side of the NEAR or ~ operator should be approximately close to the word or phrase on the right side of the NEAR or ~ operator. Multiple proximity terms can be chained, for example:

a NEAR b NEAR c 

This means that word or phrase a should be near word or phrase b, which should be near word or phrase c.

AND | AND NOT | OR

Specifies a logical operation between two contains search conditions. When your search contains parenthesized groups, these parenthesized groups are evaluated first. After evaluating parenthesized groups, these rules apply when using these logical operators with contains search conditions:

• AND is used to make sure that words entered all exist. For example, pilot AND fatigue will return matches where both words are present in the text.
   
• OR is used to see at least one word of your search exists. For example, pilot OR fatigue will return matches where either word is present in the text.
   
• NOT is applied before AND.
   
• NOT can only occur after AND, as in AND NOT. The OR NOT operator is not allowed. NOT cannot be specified before the first term (for example, 'NOT "phrase_to_search_for" ' ).
   
• AND is applied before OR.
   
• Boolean operators of the same type (AND, OR) are associative and can therefore be applied in any order.

Noise Words

about
1
after
2
all
also
3
an
4
and
5
another
6
any
7
are
8
as
9
at
0
be
$
because
been
before
being
between
both
but
by
came
can
come
could
did
do
each
for
from
get
got
has
had
he
have
her
here
him
himself
his
how
if
in
into
is
it
like
make
many
me
might
more
most
much
must
my
never
now
of
on
only
or
other
our
out
over
said
same
see
should
since
some
still
such
take
than
that
the
their
them
then
there
these
they
this
those
through
to
too
under
up
very
was
way
we
well
were
what
where
which
while
who
with
would
you
your
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