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Lesson 4 Defining full-text indexes
Objective Define full-text indexes.

Defining full-text Indexes

Before you can specify which columns will make up the full-text index, you must first enable the database and the table itself that will contain the columns. Enterprise Manager and Transact SQL guide you through the necessary steps to create a full-text index.

Using Enterprise Manager

Using Enterprise Manager, select the name of your database. Then choose the Tools->Full-text indexing menu option. This brings up the Full-Text Indexing Wizard, as shown in the dialog box below:

Full-Text Indexing Wizard
Full-Text Indexing Wizard

With this wizard, you can do the following:
  1. Enable a database for full-text searching
  2. Select tables used in a full-text catalog
  3. Select columns within those tables used in a full-text catalog

Using Transact SQL


Defining a full-text index with Transact-SQL is quite a bit different than defining a relational index since there is no specific syntax as provided by SQL. The syntax for defining a full-text index is done by using system stored procedures.


Click the link below to view the table below to see a table of the system stored procedures.
System Stored Procedures
Use the Slide show below to follow the steps that you must take to define your full-text catalogs as shown in the above table. In this example, assume that the Employees table has a Notes column that is a text datatype. The Employees table is in the DT database.
1) Full Database 1 2) Full Database  2 3) Full Database  3 4) Full Database  4 5) Full Database  5

full-text index
In the next lesson, we will write queries to access full-text catalogs.