Microsoft SQL Server 2005 fulltext search case-sensitive

Microsoft SQL Server 2005’s fulltext search is supposed to be case-insensitive. Supposed to be. But actually, it isn’t. For example, the statement:

CONTAINSTABLE(tbl, column, FORMSOF(INFLECTIONAL, x-710))

yields no results, but with a capital “X” 

CONTAINSTABLE(tbl, column, FORMSOF(INFLECTIONAL, X-710))

yields 22 results in my database. Searching around the MS forums a bit I get a feeling it has something todo with locale-specific wordbreaking, but who really cares.

Lesson learnt: transform your fulltext search term to upper case to prevent unpredictable behavior.