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Impact of Full-Text Indexing on Performance

  • November 19, 2009 at 7:33 am

    #214034

    Does enabling full-text indexing on a server that only uses <=, =, >= and LIKE on VARCHAR and NVARCHAR fields negatively impact performance on that server? A client of ours is running our database in it's own instance alongside sever other instances on their server and has enabled it because they were trying to speed up our database.

    Thank you.

  • December 6, 2009 at 11:34 am

    #1088280

    If you read up on the Full-Text Indexing Process in SQL Server 2005 BOL it states that the full-text population and master merge can be I/O intensive. Also check out this best practices article:

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc917695.aspx

    If you are dealing with SQL Server 2008, it looks like there have been some significant changes, so you may want to check it's BOL.

  • December 7, 2009 at 8:19 am

    #1088577

    Enabling Full-Text by itself doesn't impact performance. Note that all SQL Server 2005 database have full-text enabled by default.

    If you don't have any columns that have a full-text index on it (i.e., a full-text catalog), it will not impact performance.

    Full-Text indexes WILL NOT improve queries with traditional SQL comparison operators. It is only used by the full-text functions such as CONTAINS.

    So for Full-Text to work the following must be enabled:

    1. Full-Text installed and enabled at the database

    2. Full-Text catalog created.

    3. Use of CONTAINS or other full-text query function.

    [font="Arial Narrow"](PHB) I think we should build an SQL database. (Dilbert) What color do you want that database? (PHB) I think mauve has the most RAM.[/font]

  • December 7, 2009 at 8:24 am

    #1088586

    Thanks Mauve. That's what I thought, but I wasn't 100% sure.

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