The FreeTextTable function in SQL Server is very useful when you need to search a column for words, phrases, etc. FreeTextTable will return a table that you can join on.  It also returns the Rank of the matches so you can order the most relevant matches at the top.

In the example below I am searching the Keywords column of the MyTable table using the @Keywords passed into the stored procedure.  I am then ordering them by Rank so the highest matches show up first.

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[FreeTextSample]
    @Keywords [varchar](1000) = ''
WITH EXECUTE AS CALLER
AS
BEGIN
    SET NOCOUNT ON;

    SELECT myTable.MyPrimaryKeyID,
        myTable.Title,
        myTable.Description
    FROM MyTable myTable(nolock)
    INNER JOIN FreeTextTable(dbo.MyTable, Keywords, @Keywords) AS searchTable
        ON myTable.MyPrimaryKeyID = searchTable.[KEY]
    ORDER By searchTable.[RANK] DESC

END
GO    

One thing to note is that LINQ does not contain an equivalent keyword for FreeTextTable.  So what I did was to create a new method on my DataContext that returns the results of the stored procedure.  See my post here for further details on how to do this.

We saw the above message in SourceSafe after moving to SQL Server 2008 and then saving the scripts for our tables back to SourceSafe.  It appears that SQL 2008 Management Studio uses a different text encoding than prior versions of Management Studio/Enterprise Manager.

To save your script using a specific text encoding.  You can "Save as.." and then there is an arrow to the right of the Save button.  Click this and select "Save with Encoding...".  Then you can select the specific encoding you need.  In my case I needed to change the encoding from "Western Eurpean (Windows) - Codepage 1252" to "Unicode - Codepage 1200".

This trigger will write to an archive table when a row is updated or deleted.  Very useful when you want to know who did what and when.

USE [DatabaseName]
GO

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[trigTableName_Archive] 
   ON  [dbo].[TableName]
   FOR UPDATE, DELETE
AS 
BEGIN
    SET NOCOUNT ON;
    
    INSERT INTO TableName_ARCHIVE
        (Column1,
        Column2,
        Column3)
    SELECT
        Column1,
        Column2,
        Column3
    FROM deleted

END

I always seem to be looking this up.  So here it is:

USE DatabaseName
GO

ALTER TABLE TableName
ADD CONSTRAINT ConstraintName
UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED (ColumnName)
GO