Data in sql azure, we have an existing webapi expose the data with odata. Issue is client want to make a call with filters with substring query on a few columns, which making performance really slow. we are debating at this point whether to use full text search index or use the azure search service, thoughts please?
Some of the considerations and tradeoffs between hosting search in Azure Search vs. using SQL Server FTS are captured here.
As pointed out above, Azure Search can index in-database data - see Connecting Azure SQL Database to Azure Search using indexers.