Troubleshooting your FORMSOF & INFLECTIONAL searches not working, SQL Server 2005

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t get different results, using SQL Server 2005, for a simple Full-Text Search query and a Full-Text Search query using the FORMSOF and INFLECTIONAL keywords.

What I stumbled across eventually was that when creating and configuring my SQL Full-Text Indexes, I had left the language parameter as the default selection. When I changed this to English, voila!, my FORMSOF (INFLECTIONAL, @query) queries started to produces fantastic search results!

Also, an example query showing how to parameterize the the search term, and how to rank your results:

@query varchar (100)

SET @query = ‘FORMSOF (INFLECTIONAL, ‘ + @query + ‘)’

SELECT FT.rank, P.id, P.title
FROM Products P
INNER JOIN CONTAINSTABLE (Products, *, @query) AS FT ON P.id = FT.[key]

If you’ve any questions, I’ll do my best to help. Also, if you’re just starting with Full-Text, check out my posts on installing Full-Text Search on SQL Server 2005 and how to setup and configure SQL Server 2005 Express Full-Text Search the easy way.