title: Best Way To Partial Search in SQL 2008
body: <p>I've looked into SQL 2008's built-in Full-Text search, and also Lucene.NET.. but I don't think they'll do what I need to do.  And I just want to make sure I'm building my program as efficient as possible.</p>
  
  <p>So here's the dream.  I want to have a single textbox on a page (like google) and allow the user to enter ANYTHING in.  And based on their text, I will search 10's of tables to find what they're looking for.</p>
  
  <p>Example.  My database contains thousands of locations, each of which have multiple names / codes.  Within each location, there is tonnes of data associated with them.</p>
  
  <p>So if the user wants to display all the locations with the codes that contain "VM" ("CD-VM01", "CD-VM02", "CD-VM03", etc).. they should be able to.  Or if they want to find all the locations in Toronto, they just type Toronto.. I want to make the search as easy as possible for people.  (I've found that people don't like thinking)..  </p>
  
  <p>Plus it ends up being easier to scale to more search options if I can just search the database, and not have to add new fields to a search screen.</p>
  
  <p>So if I don't use Full Text search (which I can't for partial) the only thing I can see that i'm left with is "Like" ..  is that right? is that my only option?</p>