CONTAINS in INNER JOIN where a column needs to be passed as the string to be searched

Hi All,
I have a table tbl1 with these columns BodyText (freetext index added to enable search on this column(text datatype) of the table) and ArticleID INT PRIMARY KEY
tbl2 stringtosearch varchar(250) , stringID INT PRIMARY KEY
My query is
SELECT t1,ArticleID
, t2. stringID
, t1.BodyText
, t2.stringtosearch
FROM tbl2 t2
INNER JOIN tbl1 t1 ON CONTAINS(BodyText,t2.stringtosearch)
The above query is returning me this error --
Incorrect syntax near t2 on this line -- "INNER JOIN tbl1 t1 ON CONTAINS(BodyText,t2.stringtosearch)"
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Thank in advance,
Surya Kiran

Hi All,
I have corrected some basic syntactical mistakes but i am still left with the same syntax error.
Here is my corrected code --
I have a table tbl1 with these columns BodyText (freetext index added to enable search on this column(text datatype) of the table) and ArticleID INT PRIMARY KEY
tbl2 stringtosearch varchar(250) , stringID INT PRIMARY KEY
My query is
SELECT t1.ArticleID
, t2. stringID
, t1.BodyText
, t2.stringtosearch
FROM tbl2 t2
INNER JOIN tbl1 t1 ON CONTAINS(BodyText,t2.stringtosearch)
The above query is returning me this error --
Incorrect syntax near t2 on this line -- "INNER JOIN tbl1 t1 ON CONTAINS(t1.BodyText,t2.stringtosearch)"
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Surya Kiran
Hi All,
I have a table tbl1 with these columns BodyText (freetext index added to enable search on this column(text datatype) of the table) and ArticleID INT PRIMARY KEY
tbl2 stringtosearch varchar(250) , stringID INT PRIMARY KEY
My query is
SELECT t1.ArticleID
, t2. stringID
, t1.BodyText
, t2.stringtosearch
FROM tbl2 t2
INNER JOIN tbl1 t1 ON CONTAINS(BodyText,t2.stringtosearch)
The above query is returning me this error --
Incorrect syntax near t2 on this line -- "INNER JOIN tbl1 t1 ON CONTAINS(t1.BodyText,t2.stringtosearch)"
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Thank in advance,
Surya Kiran

My first guess would be that you cannot use CONTAINS in a JOIN clause (although BOL does not say so) so your first option would be to drop the JOIN and use something like:

SELECT ..............
FROM tbl2 t2, tbl1 t1
WHERE CONTAINS(........................)
BOL also states: "CONTAINS is not recognized as a keyword if the compatibility level is less than 70. For more information, see sp_dbcmptlevel."

Hi Adriaan,
Thank You for the quick reply.
I tried the way that you have suggestedSELECT
....
FROM tbl2 t2 , tbl1 t1
WHERE CONTAINS(t1.BodyText,t2.stringtosearch) resulted in the same error --Incorrect syntax near 't2'. on Line 3 above.
I am trying to use cursor and send in a variable but i am apprehensive that i will be having a performance setback , but would stick to using Cursors if they are the only way out of this problem.
my code is based on the snippet in BOL of search phrase "CONTAINS"--
H. Use CONTAINS with variables

This example uses a variable instead of a specific search term.
USE pubsGODECLARE @SearchWord varchar(30)SET @SearchWord ='Moon'SELECT pr_info FROM pub_info WHERE CONTAINS(pr_info, @SearchWord)
I am using a cursor to achive the same .
I got my results , and I am on my way to analyze how much correct the result set that I have achieved is ..
Thank You very much,
K.Surya Kiran.

The examples in BOL have either a string expression between single quotes, or a variable, as the second parameter. Looks like you cannot use a column name as the second parameter.
Have you tried using a LIKE clause with concatenation:

WHERE col1 LIKE '%' + col2 + '%'