I was working with a database of 3 million records, where a full text index takes 3 days to complete

 

I found a gem of a stored proc, sp_fulltext_service 'resource_usage',5 it sped up the population to 9 hours!

 

 

 

 

If you set a default value to a column, then try to drop that column, in MS SQL, you sometimes get obscure errors like this.

 

Server: Msg 5074, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The object 'DF__question_v__type__50C5FA01' is dependent on column 'type'.
Server: Msg 4922, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN type failed because one or more objects access this column.

I have found that this can be fixed with this command:

 

alter table question_values drop constraint DF__question_v__type__4FD1D5C8

 

Where the table name would be changed to fit your own purposes.