Anything new to expect with SQL Fulltext searching?

would love to see improved proximity searching, specifically the ability to find terms within x number of words of another term.

thanks-
And I'm throwing in a bit more: How about the support for various languages? Will more languages be supported?|||And how about access to the Full Text index for term frequencies?|||

Hi Andrew,

we have lots of news in the next FTS. Unfortunately, the ability to specify x number of words in NEAR is not yet sure whether it is going to make it on time for the release or not. We are aware of its importancy and working on it as we can, however, there are timelines and schedules we can not move as we would want. Be sure we will try hard to push this feature into our next release. If nto possible by then, be sure it will be in the top 5 features we address immediatelly after.

Thanks.

|||Yes. The nest FTS will include a wider range of supported languages out of the box. We are currently working on the integration of >40 new word breakers (languages). If everything goes as we expect, the next SQL Server release will have a significantly improved language coverage story in FTS.|||Yes. Our next FTS release will provide tools to access the raw data of the FTIndex by Administrators only. These tools will allow you to see the content of the FTIndex and all its metadata associated. This will be extremely useful to find answers or problems associated with your Search application. Frequency of terms will be part of the results returned by these new tools (DMVs).|||

Are the new DMVs in the current June CTP or are you saying they will be in one of the upcoming 2008 CTPs? I'm very interested in this capability for use in data mining, implementation of semantic search, etc.. On that note, are there any plans for your team to address semantic search?

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The new improved FTS capabilities are coming in a future CTP. As to semantic search: We are looking into semantic search capabilities, but for 2008 we only provide you the thesaurus support that is available already in SQL Server 2005 (which some improved manageability).

Best regards

Michael

|||Really excited about the inclusion new FTS features in SQL Server 2008. Did the "abililty to specify x number of words NEAR" make it into the latest beta? If not, do you think it will it be in the full version release? I am working on a project that requires this feature and am hopeful that it will become available soon.