Performance of like '%Query%' vs full text search CONTAINS query

Question

I have a situation where I would like to search a single word.

For that scenario, which query would be good from a performance point of view?

Answer 1

For a typical database, the CONTAINS search can be much faster assuming the appropriate full text search index is built on the field being searched. The evaluation of the LIKE operator generally doesn't use an index and thus must read all the data.