Is it better to use FREETEXT or CONTAINS Full Text Searches when searching by single characters I am trying to come up with the most efficient way to search for records in a collection of about 130,000 total records.  The long, short of it is we have about 130,000 Active Directory records.  I am building a site that looks up users in AD.  I would like to implement TypeAhead functionality on a Search box.  I could query AD directly in code, but am thinking about dumping the data into SQL Server and querying that instead.  TypeAhead does a search as you type characters in the textbox.  Is it efficient to search a table of 130,000 records by single characters?  I am trying to determine if the searching should be done by the SQL Server engine or on the site?  I am thinking SQL Server.  If true, is it better to use FREETEXT or CONTAINS full text searches?

Curious what the community thinks about this?  Or am I way off?
I'm not sure I'm understanding your question.  FREETEXT evaluates not only on the string, but also the meaning.  Whereas CONTAINS is used for precise or fuzzy searching on a string.