I am trying to ascertain whether SQL Server lags behind Oracle in text search/index capabilities. In reading about Oracle Text in some white papers on Oracle's web site, many features were mentioned that looked very appealing for a pending web application I will be developing. These included:

a) proximity searches
b) flexible weighting schemes
c) ability to synchronize the text indexes via PL/SQL statement (instead of waiting for a schedule process to update the text indexes)
d) native field type that references external files of numerous types (Word, etc), and allows their contents to be indexed as though part of the database

Does anyone know how closely SQL Server matched these capabilities? Also, has there been any decent comparisons between the 2 products in this area?

Thanks,

-- Randy
[I am also posting in Oracle forum, as I don't know the overlap of users.]