Hi Andrew,
we have lots of news in the next FTS. Unfortunately, the ability to specify x number of words in NEAR is not yet sure whether it is going to make it on time for the release or not. We are aware of its importancy and working on it as we can, however, there are timelines and schedules we can not move as we would want. Be sure we will try hard to push this feature into our next release. If nto possible by then, be sure it will be in the top 5 features we address immediatelly after.
Thanks.
Are the new DMVs in the current June CTP or are you saying they will be in one of the upcoming 2008 CTPs I'm very interested in this capability for use in data mining, implementation of semantic search, etc.. On that note, are there any plans for your team to address semantic search
The new improved FTS capabilities are coming in a future CTP. As to semantic search: We are looking into semantic search capabilities, but for 2008 we only provide you the thesaurus support that is available already in SQL Server 2005 (which some improved manageability).
Best regards
Michael
Unfortunately, we did not have the bandwidth to tackle this important feature for this coming release. As you know, we have been working very hard creating a new fully-integrated FT Engine for SQL 2008. The advantages of such integration are massive, but such technical challenge did not allow us to address this ¡®customizable NEAR¡¯ requirement, as well as many others we had in mind. These will need to wait until our next release.
Be sure I will try to have it public as soon as possible, as we realize this is an important feature we are lacking at this point.
There is another very important requirement with FTS which should be met along with the other things, is the highlighting or returning a column of the hit words, by which only we will be able to see the importance of the results of FTS. It is very much required when doing thesousrus or inflectional search. Pls elaborate about this point at the earliest.
Upinder