Thesaurus
In Microsoft SQL Server 2005, full-text queries can use a thesaurus to find synonyms of search terms. For each supported language, there exists a single thesaurus file. The complete list of thesaurus files is located in the SQL_Server_install_path\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\FTDATA\ directory.
The thesaurus file name takes the following format:
‘ts’ + <three-letter language-abbreviation> + '.xml'
For example, the thesaurus file for US English is named “tsENU.xml”. There is one additional file named ‘tsGLOBAL.xml’.
Important
Do not move or delete the tsschema.xml file. This file contains the schema definition for all the thesaurus files.
To expand or replace a term or terms to include a list of synonyms, you can customize thesaurus files. A thesaurus can be used for one language version, and each thesaurus can be configured by editing its configuration files (in XML).
Note
The thesaurus files are empty. You must add synonyms for query terms to these files before Full-Text Search queries that look for synonyms can work properly. For more information about modifying a thesaurus file, see Configuring Thesaurus Files.
By specifying FORMSOF THESAURUS in the CONTAINS or CONTAINSTABLE search conditions, all synonyms associated with the search term are identified, if found in the column being searched. For more information, see CONTAINS (Transact-SQL) and CONTAINSTABLE (Transact-SQL).
FREETEXT and FREETEXTTABLE searches use thesaurus files to identify expressions or replacements for the search terms. For more information, see FREETEXT (Transact-SQL) and FREETEXTTABLE (Transact-SQL).