Enabling full-text search limits search functionality in LA

11/8/2018 3:47 PM

3/18/2025 8:42 PM

The search queries may no longer function when the full-text search is enabled in LA. Additionally, the Deployment Health may show the following warning:

SQL Server Full Text Search
What went wrong: The Full Text Search is not installed on the SQL server with Log Analyzer database. Searching messages in Log Viewer will be significantly slower without Full Text Search



 

Log Analyzer

Missing Full Text Search feature on the SQL Server.

To utilize full-text search in LA, you must ensure that the SQL Server has that feature enabled (installed). You may run the SQL query below to check if the feature is installed and install it if it is missing.

-- Scripts are not supported under any SolarWinds support program or service.
-- Scripts are provided AS IS without warranty of any kind. SolarWinds further
-- disclaims all warranties including, without limitation, any implied warranties
-- of merchantability or of fitness for a particular purpose. The risk arising
-- out of the use or performance of the scripts and documentation stays with you.
-- In no event shall SolarWinds or anyone else involved in the creation,
-- production, or delivery of the scripts be liable for any damages whatsoever
-- (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business
-- interruption, loss of business information, or other pecuniary loss) arising
-- out of the use of or inability to use the scripts or documentation.
--
SELECT
    CASE
        WHEN FULLTEXTSERVICEPROPERTY('IsFullTextInstalled') = 1 THEN 'INSTALLED'
        ELSE 'NOT INSTALLED'
    END IsFullTextInstalled

 

Enabling full-text search ensures optimum event log search performance within LA. You can still install LA and initiate event log searches without enabling this capability, but the speed and quality of your search may be significantly reduced. However, with full-text search, select wildcard queries will no longer function. Specifically, any wildcard that is not a begins with a wildcard. See examples using the search word Texas below:
 

• Wildcards within the word (anything that starts with 'Te' and/or ends with 'xas').
• Wildcards at the start of the word (anything that ends with 'exas').
• Wildcards that have any single character wildcarded ('Te_as').
• Wildcards that have any single character specified ('Te[jx]as' would match on Texas and Tejas).
• Wildcards that do not have any single character specified ('Te[^z]as' would match on Texas or Tejas, but not Tezas).

 

You will find more information about non-full-text search wildcards here.
 

Stopwords 

Microsoft SQL Server discards many common words (a, and, the, etc.) that can diminish the quality of your search. These stopwords are included in a stoplist on the SQL Server. Executing LA queries using certain stopwords may return zero results.
 

To access the stoplist, run the following query on your SQL Server:

-- Scripts are not supported under any SolarWinds support program or service.
-- Scripts are provided AS IS without warranty of any kind. SolarWinds further
-- disclaims all warranties including, without limitation, any implied warranties
-- of merchantability or of fitness for a particular purpose. The risk arising
-- out of the use or performance of the scripts and documentation stays with you.
-- In no event shall SolarWinds or anyone else involved in the creation,
-- production, or delivery of the scripts be liable for any damages whatsoever
-- (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business
-- interruption, loss of business information, or other pecuniary loss) arising
-- out of the use of or inability to use the scripts or documentation.
--
SELECT ssw.stopword, slg.name
FROM sys.fulltext_system_stopwords ssw
JOIN sys.fulltext_languages slg
ON slg.lcid = ssw.language_id
WHERE slg.lcid =1033

 

You can find more information on stopwords here.