Fulltext index PendingChanges

  • I have relatively little experience with fulltext indexes. I have one on a table in my production environment that is behaving differently than I would expect. Specifically, I'm using SMO to view the PendingChanges property of the index and it's ever-increasing. The index has ChangeTracking set to automatic. I thought that maybe it had never had a population run against it, but when I try to do 'alter fulltext index [name of index] start full population', the command runs successfully, but I never see the PopulationStatus property change. Also, the ItemCount and DocumentsProcessed count are 0. Thanks in advance for your help.

  • if you see the Item count...at 0 wait a while....depending on how big the Full text index is it could take a while...

    also what does your last population date say? I usually check that as sometime the rebuild is so fast you will not see the population status change?

    sometimes you will need a catalog rebuild, which basically a drops and recreates all of the index's in the catalog. just make sure you do not do more then one catalog a time....this tends to hang the rebuilds and sometime the only way to fix it is to delete them....sounds like you might just have one if so then you should be okay....let me

  • 456789psw (11/24/2010)


    if you see the Item count...at 0 wait a while....depending on how big the Full text index is it could take a while...

    also what does your last population date say? I usually check that as sometime the rebuild is so fast you will not see the population status change?

    sometimes you will need a catalog rebuild, which basically a drops and recreates all of the index's in the catalog. just make sure you do not do more then one catalog a time....this tends to hang the rebuilds and sometime the only way to fix it is to delete them....sounds like you might just have one if so then you should be okay....let me

    I issued the population request last week. I assume that it would have finished by now if it was going to finish at all. 🙂 As to the last population date, I didn't see that as a property so I can't answer that question. I'm going with the catalog rebuild to see if that fixes things. I'll let you know one way or the other. Thanks for your help!

  • after you hit rebuild...then right click on the catalog there you will be able to see the properties....and yes you are correct should have been done long by now....

    I have had many issues with FTS in the past when it comes to catalog rebuild and with populations ..all not to on common...also fyi some times the change tracking does not work all the well either...I have tried setting it to manual and creating jobs but still had issues with that as well....when all else fails catalog rebuilds seems to work best....just a takes a bit

    this should help a bit

    select c.name,t.name,change_tracking_state_desc,crawl_start_date,crawl_end_date,*

    from sys.fulltext_indexes i

    join sys.fulltext_catalogs c

    on i.fulltext_catalog_id = c.fulltext_catalog_id

    join sys.tables t

    on i.object_id = t.object_id

    join sys.indexes idx

    on i.unique_index_id = idx.index_id

    and i.object_id = idx.object_id

    order by c.name

  • So, I issued a catalog rebuild on Wednesday before I left the office. According to the query that you gave below, the crawl never completed. Are there any other places that I can look to see what's going on? Thanks for your help so far!

  • I am guess you have already checked the logs and have not found anything, if not I would try one of 2 things or both...restart the FTS service, and or drop /delete the catalog and recreate it

    also check the qry, make sure it is enabled. I have instances that the gui says its enabled but the qry says other wise

    this will check the status if its hung then you can stop it and rebuild and start it with the queries below....dpeneding on the size it should not take a longer then an hour....assuming its big. other wise maybe min's

    SELECT fulltextcatalogproperty('Search_Catalog', 'PopulateStatus')

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190370.aspx

    EXEC sp_fulltext_table 'keyword_lookup' ,stop_change_tracking

    EXEC sp_fulltext_table 'Production.Document','activate';

    EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog 'keyword_lookup_dbid', 'stop';

  • one last thing sometimes you you need to stop change tracking on each table then rebuild the catalog..this i have had to do when it gets hung ...

    this script will help

    select 'EXEC sp_fulltext_table ' + name + ' ,stop_change_tracking' from sys.tables

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