Are there any Sql Server Full-Text Search (FTS) performance improvements since version 2008 R2?

Question

we\'re using SQL Server 2008 R2 Full-Text Search over a table with 2.6 million records. The search performance often is poor, it follows the commonly reported pattern: cold

Answer 1

I'd recommend you to dig a bit into SQL Server FTS internals. This will give you an idea how your query is executed and if this works for you, or not. I suggest to start from here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142505(v=sql.105).aspx and here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/cc721269.aspx. Internally FTS uses tables and indexes. With all their benefits and drawbacks. So, like any other table, if data of that internal table is not in Buffer Pool, SQL Server will read from disk to RAM. Once the data in the RAM, it will be read from the RAM.