Is there a combination of “LIKE” and “IN” in SQL?

Question

In SQL I (sadly) often have to use "LIKE" conditions due to databases that violate nearly every rule of normalization. I can't change that right now. But that's irrelevant to the question.

Further, I often use conditions like WHERE something in (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21) for better readability and flexibility of my SQL statements.

Is there any possible way to combine these two things without writing complicated sub-selects?

I want something as easy as WHERE something LIKE ('bla%', '%foo%', 'batz%') instead of this:

WHERE something LIKE 'bla%'
OR something LIKE '%foo%'
OR something LIKE 'batz%'

I'm working with SQl Server and Oracle here but I'm interested if this is possible in any RDBMS at all.

Answer 1

I may have a solution for this, although it will only work in SQL Server 2008 as far as I know. I discovered that you can use the row-constructor described in https://stackoverflow.com/a/7285095/894974 to join a 'fictional' table using a like clause. It sounds more complex then it is, look:

SELECT [name]
  ,[userID]
  ,[name]
  ,[town]
  ,[email]
FROM usr
join (values ('hotmail'),('gmail'),('live')) as myTable(myColumn) on email like '%'+myTable.myColumn+'%' 

This will result in all users with an e-mail adres like the ones provided in the list. Hope it's of use to anyone. The problem had been bothering me a while.

Answer 2

If you want to make your statement easily readable, then you can use REGEXP_LIKE (available from Oracle version 10 onwards).

An example table:

SQL> create table mytable (something)
  2  as
  3  select 'blabla' from dual union all
  4  select 'notbla' from dual union all
  5  select 'ofooof' from dual union all
  6  select 'ofofof' from dual union all
  7  select 'batzzz' from dual
  8  /

Table created.

The original syntax:

SQL> select something
  2    from mytable
  3   where something like 'bla%'
  4      or something like '%foo%'
  5      or something like 'batz%'
  6  /

SOMETH
------
blabla
ofooof
batzzz

3 rows selected.

And a simple looking query with REGEXP_LIKE

SQL> select something
  2    from mytable
  3   where regexp_like (something,'^bla|foo|^batz')
  4  /

SOMETH
------
blabla
ofooof
batzzz

3 rows selected.

BUT ...

I would not recommend it myself due to the not-so-good performance. I'd stick with the several LIKE predicates. So the examples were just for fun.

Answer 3

u can even try this

Function

CREATE  FUNCTION [dbo].[fn_Split](@text varchar(8000), @delimiter varchar(20))
RETURNS @Strings TABLE
(   
  position int IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
  value varchar(8000)  
)
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @index int
SET @index = -1

WHILE (LEN(@text) > 0)
  BEGIN 
    SET @index = CHARINDEX(@delimiter , @text) 
    IF (@index = 0) AND (LEN(@text) > 0) 
      BEGIN  
        INSERT INTO @Strings VALUES (@text)
          BREAK 
      END 
    IF (@index > 1) 
      BEGIN  
        INSERT INTO @Strings VALUES (LEFT(@text, @index - 1))  
        SET @text = RIGHT(@text, (LEN(@text) - @index)) 
      END 
    ELSE
      SET @text = RIGHT(@text, (LEN(@text) - @index))
    END
  RETURN
END

Query

select * from my_table inner join (select value from fn_split('ABC,MOP',','))
as split_table on my_table.column_name like '%'+split_table.value+'%';

Answer 4

With PostgreSQL there is the ANY or ALL form:

WHERE col LIKE ANY( subselect )

or

WHERE col LIKE ALL( subselect )

where the subselect returns exactly one column of data.

Answer 5

I would suggest using a TableValue user function if you'd like to encapsulate the Inner Join or temp table techniques shown above. This would allow it to read a bit more clearly.

After using the split function defined at: http://www.logiclabz.com/sql-server/split-function-in-sql-server-to-break-comma-separated-strings-into-table.aspx

we can write the following based on a table I created called "Fish" (int id, varchar(50) Name)

SELECT Fish.* from Fish 
    JOIN dbo.Split('%ass,%e%',',') as Splits 
    on Name like Splits.items  //items is the name of the output column from the split function.

Outputs

1   Bass
2   Pike
7   Angler
8   Walleye

Answer 6

Another solution, should work on any RDBMS:

WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1
                FROM (SELECT 'bla%' pattern FROM dual UNION ALL
                      SELECT '%foo%'        FROM dual UNION ALL
                      SELECT 'batz%'        FROM dual)
               WHERE something LIKE pattern)