What is the use of creating full text catalog in full text indexing

Question

Just want to know about the processes happening in full text indexing. I know by defining the full text indexing for a table, it will index all the words saved in that table.

But i didn't get the use of creating a catalog for a full text index. And how an index related to catalog. Simply what the full text catalog will do in full text indexing.

Answer 1

From BOL:

After columns have been added to a full-text index, users and applications can run full-text queries on the text in the columns. These queries can search for any of the following:

• One or more specific words or phrases (simple term)
• A word or a phrase where the words begin with specified text (prefix term)
• Inflectional forms of a specific word (generation term)
• A word or phrase close to another word or phrase (proximity term)
• Synonymous forms of a specific word (thesaurus)
• Words or phrases using weighted values (weighted term)

A full-text catalog is a logical concept that refers to a group of full-text indexes. Catalogs makes it easier for maintaining full text indexes.