SQL Server Full Text Search with complete sentences - sql

Question

I have an Azure SQL database and tried the full text search.
Is is possible to search for a complete sentence?
E.g. query with LIKE-operator that works (but probably not fast as full text search):
SELECT Sentence
FROM Sentences
WHERE 'This is a whole sentence for example.' LIKE '%'+Sentence+'%'
Would return: "a whole sentence"
I need something like that with full text search:
SELECT Sentence
FROM Sentences
WHERE FREETEXT(WorkingExperience,'This is a whole sentence for example.')
This will return each hit on a word, but not on the complete sentence.
E.g. would return: "a whole sentence" and "another sentence".
Is that possible or do I have to use the LIKE-operator?

Answer 1

Have you tried this:
SELECT Sentence
FROM Sentences
WHERE FREETEXT(WorkingExperience,'"This is a whole sentence for example."')
If the above doesn't work you may need to construct the proper FTS search string using AND operator, like below:
SELECT Sentence
FROM Sentences
WHERE FREETEXT(WorkingExperience,'"This" AND "is" AND "a" AND "whole"
AND "sentence" AND "for" AND "example."')
Also, for more precise matching I recommend using CONTAINS or CONTAINSTABLE:
SELECT Sentence
FROM Sentences
WHERE CONTAINS(WorkingExperience,'"This is a whole sentence for example."')
HTH

Answer 2

If anyone else is interested here is a link for a good article with examples:
https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2201634&seqNum=3
You can choose the best method to accommodate your need from the examples.
To me matching a whole sentence can be easily done with the below where clause as mentioned in the other answer:
WHERE CONTAINS(WorkingExperience,'"This is a whole sentence for example."')
if you need to look for all the words but user might input them in abnormal sequence I would suggest to use
WHERE CONTAINS(WorkingExperience, N'NEAR(This, whole, sentence, is, a, for, example)')
You can do other magics with this which can be found in the above article. If you need to order the result based on the hit score/rank you will need to use CONTAINSTABLE instead of CONTAINS.