Sql server full text search performance with additional conditions We have a performance problem with SQL Server (2008 R2) Full text search. When we have additional where conditions to full-text search condition, it gets too slow.

Here is my simplified query:

SELECT * FROM Calls C
WHERE (C.CallTime BETWEEN '2013-08-01 00:00:00' AND '2013-08-07 00:00:00')
AND CONTAINS(CustomerText, '("efendim")')


Calls table's primary key is CallId (int, clustered index) and also Calls table indexed by CallTime. We have 16.000.000 rows and CustomerText is about 10KB for each row.

When I see execution plan, first it finds full-text search resultset and then joins with Calls table by CallId. Because of that, if first resultset has more rows, query gets slower (over a minute).

This is the execution plan:



When I run where conditions seperately, it returns 360.000 rows for CallTime condition:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Calls C
WHERE (C.CallTime BETWEEN '2013-08-01 00:00:00' AND '2013-08-07 00:00:00')


and 1.200.000 rows for Contains condition:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Calls C
WHERE CONTAINS(AgentText, '("efendim")')


What can I do to increase performance of my query?
Kin made a couple of suggestions which should be helpful.

First: Make sure that your statistics for the CallTime index are up to date.

Your plan shows that the time filter is being made by seeks to the clustered index.  So, for some reason the CallTime index is not being used.  What is the definition of that index?  If it is a multicolumn index, be sure that the most specific column is first. Example:

IDX_Calls_CallTime
  NOT: CallID, CallTime
  USE: CallTime, CallID


Second: Consider using CONTAINSTABLE.

I doubt that you will ever want to return 1.200.000 rows for "efendim".  By using CONTAINSTABLE and ranking you can set the top number of rows that you want, thus reducing the number of FullText results to process to 10, 100, 1000, or whatever fits your needs.