I'm tech editing a book on Full-Text Search for SQL Server 2008 and the last few weeks have been quite a bit of hassling with setup. I haven't done a lot of work with Full-Text since 2000, when we tried to implement it at SQLServerCentral.com. We dug through quite a few search products, including full-text search and I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure it out. I thought this project would be a good way to get me learning about the changes in 2008.

I wanted a ready made database for some testing. I got one from the authors, but I didn't want to be just using that, so I downloaded AdventureWorks. As soon as I got ready to attach the files, I got an error about FileStream access. No big deal, I went an enabled Filestream for the server, setting it to full access and tried it again.

The same error.

I dug around, flipped through some docs and finally found that you have to enable filestream in the Configuration Manager's properties, on the second tab for the database server. Not sure why this is different than doing it for the server, but I did it and got AdventureWorks going.

My second error was with the database the author's sent. It had full-text catalogs, but I couldn't search them. I could rebuild them, kick off populations, but a FREETEXT query gave me an error. Since I had chapters from various points (I didn't get 1, then 2, then 3, I got 2, then 6), I thought maybe I missed something in an earlier chapter.

I emailed the author and noticed the the FDHOST.EXE wasn't running, though FDLAUNCHER.EXE was. I then found  a reference on the Microsoft TechNet boards that someone had added the Local Service account to the FullText security group created by the install and it worked. I tried that, restarted SQL Server, and it didn't work.

Then forgetting the policy of changing only one thing, I also checked protocols.TCP/IP was disabled, which was strange, but perhaps because I was in a server VM. I'd accepted the defaults when installing, so I changed TCP/IP to enabled, shut down the server and restarted things and it was working.

Bottom line, seems like many things in 2008 are easier, but there are quite a few things buried in there that aren't obvious on how to enable.