Q:

Best Way To Partial Search in SQL 2008

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.
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.
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.
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)..  
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.
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?

A:

It appears that the easiest / quickest solution for this exact problem would be to use LIKE.  

