Can I use dynamically LIKE and IN together? - sql-server

Question

I want to be able to say :
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE accountName LIKE('%john%', '%bill%', '%lory%'.....)
I want that to be dynamically, which means depend on user input the list of '%name%' parts will be different. One time could have 3 names and another probably just 1.

Answer 1

You could use JOIN:
SELECT DISTINCT myTable.*
FROM myTable
JOIN (SELECT '%john%' UNION ALL
SELECT '%bill%' UNION ALL
SELECT '%lory%') sub(c) -- this could be anything table variable/temp
ON myTable.accountName LIKE sub.c;
Keep in mind that '%...%' is not SARG-able.
With table variable:
DECLARE #tab AS TABLE (c NVARCHAR(100));
INSERT INTO #tab(c) VALUES ('...');
-- ...
SELECT DISTINCT myTable.*
FROM myTable
JOIN #tab t
ON myTable.accountName LIKE t.c;

Answer 2

WHERE accountName LIKE('%john%', '%bill%', '%lory%'.....)
This is invalid syntax and won't work. The easiest way to do what you're trying to do would be to use a "string splitter" function like Jeff Moden's DelimitedSplit8K
DECLARE #Names VARCHAR(1000) = 'john, bill, lory';
SELECT
*
FROM
dbo.myTable mt
CROSS APPLY dbo.DelimitedSplit8K(#Names, ',') dsk
WHERE
mt.accountname LIKE '%' + dsk.Item + '%';
OR
SELECT
*
FROM
dbo.myTable mt
WHERE
EXISTS (
SELECT 1
FROM dbo.DelimitedSplit8K(#Names, ',') dsk
WHERE mt.accountname LIKE '%' + dsk.Item + '%'
);
HTH, Jason

Answer 3

Building off of Jason and Lad's very excellent solutions you could speed things up with an indexed view.
Before I continue - it's important to note that this will slow down inserts/updates/deletes in high-traffic OLTP environments that modify these tables often. TEST, TEST, TEST!.
I work in the Data Warehouse world where this works out quite nicely.
First a keyword table for common search terms:
CREATE TABLE dbo.keyword (kw varchar(100) not null, constraint uq_keyword unique clustered(kw));
INSERT dbo.keyword VALUES ('john'), ('bill'), ('lory');
Next for your table:
CREATE TABLE dbo.mytable(someid int identity not null, accountname varchar(100));
INSERT dbo.mytable(accountname) VALUES
('John''s Flowers'), ('Candles by Bill'), ('Some other account'), ('The Lory Group LLC');
Now the view along with a couple important indexes:
CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_mytable_fastKWLookup
WITH SCHEMABINDING AS -- schemabinding required for indexed views
SELECT
t.someid,
t.accountname,
k.kw
FROM dbo.mytable t
CROSS JOIN dbo.keyword k
WHERE t.accountname LIKE '%'+k.kw+'%';
GO
-- required unique clustered index
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX uq_cl_vw_mytable_fastKWLookup
ON dbo.vw_mytable_fastKWLookup(kw, someid);
-- A good nonclustered index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX nc_vw_mytable_fastKWLookup__kw
ON dbo.vw_mytable_fastKWLookup(kw) include (someid, accountname);
Once your indexed view is in place you can add your search words to an in list like so:
SELECT someid, accountname, kw
FROM vw_mytable_fastKWLookup WITH (NOEXPAND)
WHERE kw IN ('John', 'Lory', 'Bill', 'Fred');
Results:
someid accountname kw
----------- -------------------- -----
1 John's Flowers john
2 Candles by Bill bill
4 The Lory Group LLC lory
The reward here is an execution plan that does a non-clustered index seek for %searchstring% style searches.