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

This works for comma separated values

DECLARE @ARC_CHECKNUM VARCHAR(MAX)
SET @ARC_CHECKNUM = 'ABC,135,MED,ASFSDFSF,AXX'
SELECT ' AND (a.arc_checknum LIKE ''%' + REPLACE(@arc_checknum,',','%'' OR a.arc_checknum LIKE ''%') + '%'')''

Evaluates to:

 AND (a.arc_checknum LIKE '%ABC%' OR a.arc_checknum LIKE '%135%' OR a.arc_checknum LIKE '%MED%' OR a.arc_checknum LIKE '%ASFSDFSF%' OR a.arc_checknum LIKE '%AXX%')

If you want it to use indexes, you must omit the first '%' character.

Answer 2

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

Teradata supports LIKE ALL/ANY syntax:

ALL every string in the list.
ANY any string in the list.

┌──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────┐
│      THIS expression …       │ IS equivalent to this expression … │
├──────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────┤
│ x LIKE ALL ('A%','%B','%C%') │ x LIKE 'A%'                        │
│                              │ AND x LIKE '%B'                    │
│                              │ AND x LIKE '%C%'                   │
│                              │                                    │
│ x LIKE ANY ('A%','%B','%C%') │ x LIKE 'A%'                        │
│                              │ OR x LIKE '%B'                     │
│                              │ OR x LIKE '%C%'                    │
└──────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────┘

Answer 3

No answer like this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE something LIKE ('bla% %foo% batz%')

In oracle no problem.

Answer 4

I have a simple solution, that works in postgresql at least, using like any followed by the list of regex. Here is an example, looking at identifying some antibiotics in a list:

select *
from database.table
where lower(drug_name) like any ('{%cillin%,%cyclin%,%xacin%,%mycine%,%cephal%}')

Answer 5

If you are using MySQL the closest you can get is full-text search:

Full-Text Search, MySQL Documentation

Answer 6

For Sql Server you can resort to Dynamic SQL.

Most of the time in such situations you have the parameter of IN clause based on some data from database.

The example below is a little "forced", but this can match various real cases found in legacy databases.

Suppose you have table Persons where person names are stored in a single field PersonName as FirstName + ' ' + LastName. You need to select all persons from a list of first names, stored in field NameToSelect in table NamesToSelect, plus some additional criteria (like filtered on gender, birth date, etc)

You can do it as follows

-- @gender is nchar(1), @birthDate is date 

declare 
  @sql nvarchar(MAX),
  @subWhere nvarchar(MAX)
  @params nvarchar(MAX)

-- prepare the where sub-clause to cover LIKE IN (...)
-- it will actually generate where clause PersonName Like 'param1%' or PersonName Like 'param2%' or ...   
set @subWhere = STUFF(
  (
    SELECT ' OR PersonName like ''' + [NameToSelect] + '%''' 
        FROM [NamesToSelect] t FOR XML PATH('')
  ), 1, 4, '')

-- create the dynamic SQL
set @sql ='select 
      PersonName
      ,Gender
      ,BirstDate    -- and other field here         
  from [Persons]
  where 
    Gender = @gender
    AND BirthDate = @birthDate
    AND (' + @subWhere + ')'

set @params = ' @gender nchar(1),
  @birthDate Date'     

EXECUTE sp_executesql @sql, @params,    
  @gender,  
  @birthDate