SQL Server 2012 : Introducing Basic Query Flow - WHERE Conditions (part 2) - Using the LIKE Search Condition

Using the LIKE Search Condition

The LIKE search condition uses wildcards to search for patterns within a string. The wildcards, however, are different from the MS-DOS wildcards with which you may be familiar. Table 2 shows both the SQL and MS-DOS wildcards.

Table 2 SQL Wildcards

The next query uses the LIKE search condition to locate all products that begin with ‘Chain' optionally followed by any number of characters:

USE AdventureWorks;
SELECT Name
FROM Production.Product
WHERE
    Name LIKE ‘Chain%'

Result:

Name
-------------------
Chain
Chain Stays
Chainring
Chainring Bolts
Chainring Nut

The following query finds any StateProvince name beginning with a letter between d and f, inclusive:

USE AdventureWorks;
SELECT Name
 FROM Person.StateProvince
 WHERE Name LIKE ‘[d-f]%';

Result:

Name
--------------------------------------------------
Delaware
District of Columbia
Dordogne
Drome
England
Essonne
Eure
Eure et Loir
Finistere
Florida
France

The two possible methods for searching for a pattern that contains a wildcard are to either enclose the wildcard in square brackets or put an escape character before it. The trick to the latter workaround is that the escape character is defined within the LIKE expression.

When using the LIKE operator, be aware that the database collation's sort order determines both case-sensitivity and the sort order for the range of characters. You can optionally use the keyword COLLATE to specify the collation sort order used by the LIKE operator.

Multiple WHERE Conditions

You can combine multiple WHERE conditions within the WHERE clause using the Boolean logical operators: AND, OR, and NOT. As with the mathematical operators of multiplication and division, an order of precedence exists with the Boolean logical operators: NOT comes first, then AND, and then OR:

USE AdventureWorks;
SELECT ProductID, Name
FROM Production.Product
WHERE
    Name LIKE ‘Chain%'
OR
    ProductID BETWEEN 320 AND 324
AND
    Name Like ‘%s%';

Result:

ProductID  Name
----------- ---------------------
952     Chain
324     Chain Stays
322     Chainring
320     Chainring Bolts
321     Chainring Nut

With parentheses, the result of the query is radically changed:

USE AdventureWorks;
SELECT ProductID, Name
FROM Production.Product
WHERE
(
    Name LIKE ‘Chain%'
OR
    ProductID BETWEEN 320 AND 324
)
AND
    Name Like ‘%s%';

Result:

ProductID    Name
--------------- ---------------------
324       Chain Stays
320       Chainring Bolts

Although the two preceding queries are similar, in the first query the natural order of precedence for Boolean operators caused the AND to be evaluated before the OR. The OR included the Chains in the results.

The second query used parentheses to explicitly dictate the order of the Boolean operators. The OR collected the Chains and products with a ProductID of 952, 324, 322, 320, 321, or 323. This list was then ANDed with products that included the letter g in their names. Only products 320 and 324 passed both of those tests.

SELECT … WHERE

Surprisingly, using the WHERE clause in a SELECT statement does not require the use of a FROM clause or any data source reference. A SELECT statement without a FROM clause returns a single row that includes any expressions in the SELECT's column list.

A WHERE clause on a nontable SELECT statement serves as a restriction to the entire SELECT statement. If the WHERE condition is true, the SELECT statement functions as expected:

SELECT ‘abc' AS col
 WHERE 1>0;

Result:

col
----
abc
 (1 row(s) affected)

If the WHERE condition is false, the SELECT statement still executes but it returns zero rows:

SELECT ‘abc' AS col WHERE 1<0;

Result:

col
----