I have a simple query that relies on two full-text indexed tables, but it runs extremely slow when I have the CONTAINS combined with any additional OR search. As seen in the execution plan, the two full text searches crush the performance. If I query with just 1 of the CONTAINS, or neither, the query is sub-second, but the moment you add OR into the mix the query becomes ill-fated.

The two tables are nothing special, they're not overly wide (42 cols in one, 21 in the other; maybe 10 cols are FT indexed in each) or even contain very many records (36k recs in the biggest of the two).

I was able to solve the performance by splitting the two CONTAINS searches into their own SELECT queries and then UNION the three together. Is this UNION workaround my only hope?

Thanks.

SELECT     a.CollectionID
FROM       collections    a
INNER JOIN determinations b ON a.CollectionID = b.CollectionID 
WHERE      a.CollrTeam_Text LIKE '%fa%'
           OR CONTAINS(a.*, '"*fa*"')
           OR CONTAINS(b.*, '"*fa*"')

Execution Plan (guess I need more reputation before I can post the image):