SQL Server 2008 Full Text Search - Indexing VERY SLOW

Question

I am experimenting with full-text search. I have a table with 50 million rows with an xml field and setting up a full text search. It's 2 days later, and indexing is STILL ONGOING. It seems that it has not completely hung and continues to be indexed, but very, very slowly. I based this on the fact that when I query a table, I get more and more results. In addition, looking at the properties of the full text index (right-click on the table in sql server management studio), processed full-text documents continue to grow

Is this normal since indxing will be so slow? At this speed, it is not applicable. I do not see errors in the full text search file. Looking at the log file more carefully - I see that, apparently, when I created half a million rows of the table and placed the full text index, it took about 1 hour to index. So, extrapolating this, it will take about 100 hours to index my table.

How can I speed this up?

Thanks for any input! Sylvia

Answer 1

With 50 million rows, you reach the point where sql servers have too much other overhead and are better off with an existing text search engine that uses inverted indexes. There are various Sharepoint search options for very little money, or you can use the open source search engine and go from there.