In my previous post about How to work out which are valid full text languages on a SQL Server 2005 instance I referred to sys.syslanguages and sys.fulltext_languages in my queries, but didn't really say much more about them, so here goes

sys.syslanguages


In the definition on MSDN it states
"The name or lcid can be specified in the full-text queries and full-text index DDL."
refers to the ability to issue the following SQL:
SELECT *
FROM LanguageData
WHERE CONTAINS(*, 'the', language 1045 )
which indicates that the locale used for querying should be 1045, which equates to Polish. I have some sample SQL to post in the next few days which demonstrates the difference between indexing and querying language choices.

In General


I've been doing quite a bit of work with trying to understand how the SQL Server 2005 full text index works, and how the language choice impacts it. My knowledge of full text indexing as a whole to this stage hasn't been great, so I've done quite a lot of background reading. Amongst the best resources I've found are: both by Hillary Cotter which provide a really simple, but yet pretty comprehensive introduction to the various features of indexing and querying using the Full Text Index service.