Full Text Search in SQL 2005

Full Text Search was installed when SQL Server was installed and a service was running, so I expected it to just be sitting there waiting. This is unlike SQL 2000, where I lost count of how many times I had to install it on different servers.

Was I wrong in expecting it to just work?

Absolutely! (WRONG!!)

It seems that there is a fault in the installer that defaults the service to run under the LocalSystem account.

Fix here :- http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=907256

Having fixed this, I went on to use Full Text Search and still no luck. The option was disabled in the management console.

UNTIL

I issued the commands

USE MyDatabase
EXEC sp_fulltext_database  'enable'

"At this point, the Full Text Search was available in the Management Console"

From here in TSQL :-

--1  Create the catalog (unless you already have)

EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog   'FTCatalog','create' 

--2  Add a full text index to a table 

EXEC sp_fulltext_table     'Departments', 'create', 'FTCatalog', 'pk_departments' 
EXEC sp_fulltext_table     'Employees', 'create', 'FTCatalog', 'pk_employees' 

--3  Add a column to the full text index 

EXEC sp_fulltext_column    'Departments', 'ProductName', 'add' 
EXEC sp_fulltext_column    'Employees', 'Description', 'add' 

--4  Activate the index 

EXEC sp_fulltext_table     'Departments','activate' 
EXEC sp_fulltext_table     'Employees','activate' 

--5  Start full population 

EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog   'FTCatalog', 'start_full'