From: emurphy42@socal.rr.com   
      
   Plamen Ratchev wrote:   
      
   > Two reasons:   
   >   
   > 1). You cannot use COALESCE in the FREETEXT predicate.   
   > 2). Even if you use COALESCE before the query, then when the keyword is NULL   
   and converted to empty string you will get   
   > this error: "Null or empty full-text predicate."   
      
   Both of which can be dodged:   
      
   declare @foo varchar(whatever)   
   set @foo = coalesce(@bar,'dummytext')   
   select ... where ... and (freetext(@foo) or @bar is null)   
      
   (Inexact because now I'm doing stuff from memory, but you get the   
   idea.)  The idea is to avoid repeating the large chunk of the SELECT   
   that doesn't vary, which seems worthwhile as long as it doesn't   
   reduce performance significantly (i.e. as long as SQL is smart enough   
   to check '@bar is null' first and not bother evaluating freetext unless   
   it needs to).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)