Skip to content

shannonlowder.com

Menu
  • About
  • Biml Interrogator Demo
  • Latest Posts
Menu

70-432:Managing Full Text indexes

Posted on April 20, 2011September 27, 2011 by slowder

While preparing for the 70-432 I’m digging in to Full Text indexing a bit more than I have before.  Today, I want to cover a fairly simple topic, when do you know you need to update your Full Text index?

Let’s cover a couple scenarios I’ve seen in the past that were solved by performing some maintenance on your Full Text indexes.

We just loaded a 2 GB file to the database

There are over 100 lbs of paper in the US Harmonized Trade ScheduleI used to work with international trade data  there is a lot of textual data in there.  Nearly all of it had to be searchable by our end users.  At least once a year every country would release updates to their rules and regulations.  There was no such thing as an update file, only drop all the data, then re-add it.

The problem with our Full Text indexes usually boiled down to the following report from our users:  “We searched for regulations on cotton imports, and we didn’t see any results.  I checked the source doc, and I can see them there.  Why aren’t they in the database, didn’t you load the new file?”

Whenever a new data is added to the database, and some of that data was loaded into a column with a Full Text index, you need to perform maintenance on that index.  Just like your regular indexes, they need the attention.  It’s just Full Text indexing feels different.  It isn’t.

Rebuild the index after such a large load, make sure you do a FULL sample, so that every row in the table is scanned for your Full Text index.

If you don’t want to have to deal with this manually every time, you could add it as the last step in your SSIS package that reads in that shiny new 2GB file.

We just finished making corrections for “country x” and now the search is acting weird.

Yeah, weird is a technical term.  When translated to IT speak it means It’s broke, it’s your fault, now fix it!

In the case where my end users told me they’d just finished making corrections for a country, it meant they’d read through all the imported data, and verified the imported version matched the printed version of the country’s regulations.  When they found a discrepancy, they’d update that record to make it jive with the print version of the regulations.

This usually ended up with about 10% of the records getting a tweak of some sort.

Again, you need to update the Full Text index.  But this time, run an INCREMENTAL population.  That way you don’t take the huge performance hit of updating the whole index, just those rows that were modified since the last population of your Full Text index.

Another note, Make this a nightly process, and save yourself the hassle of dealing with this manually.  If you have a set maintenance window, I’d suggest doing this just before the backup.  That way if you have to restore, you don’t have to follow the restore with an immediate Full Text operation.  It just saves time.

Well, I’m heading back to read more about Full Text indexing.  I know there is a lot more to pick up than I have.  If I see anything more that seems to jump out at me, I’ll share it later.  That way we’re both a little closer to getting the 70-432!

If you have any questions, send them in.  I’m here to help!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • A New File Interrogator
  • Using Generative AI in Data Engineering
  • Getting started with Microsoft Fabric
  • Docker-based Spark
  • Network Infrastructure Updates

Recent Comments

  1. slowder on Data Engineering for Databricks
  2. Alex Ott on Data Engineering for Databricks

Archives

  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • August 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • November 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
  • July 2004
  • April 2004
  • March 2004
  • June 2002

Categories

  • Career Development
  • Data Engineering
  • Data Science
  • Infrastructure
  • Microsoft SQL
  • Modern Data Estate
  • Personal
  • Random Technology
  • uncategorized
© 2025 shannonlowder.com | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme