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The 'Contains' operator adds a wild character automatically to the search string, while the 'Like' operator matches for the exact search string.
The SQL CONTAINS function for Oracle database The basic syntax looks like this: CONTAINS ( column_name, substring, label ); The column_name and substring parameters are the same as they are with SQL Server. Column_name is the column you are searching and substring is the string you are searching for.
CONTAINS is a predicate used in the WHERE clause of a Transact-SQL SELECT statement to perform SQL Server full-text search on full-text indexed columns containing character-based data types. CONTAINS can search for: A word or phrase. The prefix of a word or phrase.
For Microsoft SQL Server, CONTAINS() allows for a full text pattern match SQL search queries on your table. It returns a boolean value that indicates whether the function is truthy or falsy. SELECT <columnName> FROM <yourTable> WHERE CONTAINS (<columnName>, '<yourSubstring>');
The second (assuming you means CONTAINS, and actually put it in a valid query) should be faster, because it can use some form of index (in this case, a full text index). Of course, this form of query is only available if the column is in a full text index. If it isn't, then only the first form is available.
The first query, using LIKE, will be unable to use an index, since it starts with a wildcard, so will always require a full table scan.
The CONTAINS query should be:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE CONTAINS(Column, 'test');
Having run both queries on a SQL Server 2012 instance, I can confirm the first query was fastest in my case.
The query with the LIKE keyword showed a clustered index scan.
The CONTAINS also had a clustered index scan with additional operators for the full text match and a merge join.
I think that CONTAINS took longer and used Merge because you had a dash("-") in your query adventure-works.com.
The dash is a break word so the CONTAINS searched the full-text index for adventure and than it searched for works.com and merged the results.
Also try changing from this:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE Contains(Column, "test") > 0;
To this:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE Contains(Column, '"*test*"') > 0;
The former will find records with values like "this is a test" and "a test-case is the plan".
The latter will also find records with values like "i am testing this" and "this is the greatest".
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