I would like to know if its possible to search on two combined columns. For instance in my application I have an input field for 'Full Name', but in the SQL Database I have columns Name, Surname.
Is it possible to construct a query to do a search like Name + Surname = %Full Name% ?
You can do this:
select *
from Production.Product
where (Name + ' ' + ProductNumber) like 'Bearing Ball BA-8327'
However, if you want to take advantage of indexing, you better split you your input parameter first and then use direct field comparison.
Yes you can do this, but it will be quite slow. Since Name and Surname can be indexed.
Expanding on the suggestions from previous answers, try this.
SELECT * FROM People
WHERE firstname = substring(#fullname, 1, charindex(' ', #fullname) - 1)
AND surname = substring(#fullname, charindex(' ', #fullname) + 1, len(#fullname))
Hope this helps.
If disk space is not a concern you can add a 'persistent' calculated column with the fullname this way you can maintain the specifics of two specific columns while achieving the possibility of indexing the full name column that is auto updated when either first or last name changes.
The caveats are the extra space needed as well as the somewhat slower inserts. If these two situations are a concern you can use the calculated columns without persistence to get a transparent fullname column and cleaner queries.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189292.aspx
Related
The problem I have is the following:
I work with a ticket system that uses plugins to realize workflows.
In this case I use SQL to presort incoming emails.
The SQL query looks like this:
SELECT Count(Case when {MSG_CC_002_DeviceReg_MailBody} LIKE '%You have received an invoice from%' Then 1 END);
What I want to do now is instead of using LIKE and then a certain phrase like above, I want to compare this to a column in a database table that contains all necessary phrases.
The table has only two columns, phraseID and phrase.
{MSG_CC_002_DeviceReg_MailBody} is the variable that needs to compared against the values of the column.
So if the variable matches with an entry in the column it should just return 1.
[Edit:]
This is just one of the things I want to use this for, I also have a variable {MSG_CC_002_DeviceReg_MailSender} that will provide the email address that I want to compare to a similar table that contains email addresses.
Is this possible?
If so - how?
You can use join or a subquery:
select count(*)
from t
where exists (select 1
from othertable ot
where {MSG_CC_002_DeviceReg_MailBody} LIKE '%' + ot.phrase + '%'
) ;
This will be dog-slow if you have a lot of phrases or email addresses, but it'll give you what you want.
SELECT COUNT(*) AS RetValue
FROM PhraseTable
WHERE {MSG_CC_002_DeviceReg_MailBody} LIKE '%' + phrase + '%';
Yes it is possible, you can achieve this with using dynamic query. Basically you need to construct your query as a string then execute it.
You can find examples and more information about dynamic query within the following link;
https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1160/execute-dynamic-sql-commands-in-sql-server/
A partner where I work have created the customer table with the following fields:
first_name, middle_name, last_name, second_last_name, full_name
Where full_name is the concatenation of the other fields.
Can you give me the best explaining why is a bad practice?
It's not ideal because sooner or later, someone or something is going to update last_name or first_name without updating full_name, or vice versa, and you'll have something like this in your database:
first_name last_name full_name
John White John Black
And then you get to try to figure out where the discrepancy is coming from and what this guy's last name is really supposed to be, which is no fun. If you're going to denormalize a table like this, there ought to be some compelling reason for doing so. What's your partner's rationale for wanting full_name to be a separate field?
You should probably investigate alternatives. For instance, you could define a view that returns the various name components from your table and also assembles them into a full_name. Depending on your RDBMS, you may have other options as well. For instance, in SQL Server you can put a computed column right into your table.
declare #customer table (first_name varchar(50), last_name varchar(50), full_name as first_name + ' ' + last_name);
insert #customer values ('John', 'B');
select * from #customer;
Result:
first_name last_name full_name
John B John B
If the full_name is persisted on storage, then you got data doubling: you waste twice the storage with no benefits and extra overhead on editing or other maintenance.
If full_name column is actually a function (e.g. it is calculated from the other elements on this row) the solution is fine!
Depending on the database engine you use those calculated columns can only be read (you have to update the other columns to change their outcome), or even be read-write. Writing to such a column is handled by another function, which for example could parse the full name and store the parts in the row, which is to be updated.
I have a written a query in which I create a string and take distinct values from the table based on conditions.
The table has some 5000 rows. This query takes almost 20 second to execute.
I believe that the string comparisons have made the query so slow. But I wonder what are my alternatives.
Query:
select distinct
Convert(nvarchar, p1.trafficSerial) +' ('+ p1.sourceTraffic + ' - ' + p1.sinkTraffic + ' )' as traffic
from
portList as p1
inner join
portList as p2 ON p1.pmId = p2.sinkId
AND P1.trafficSerial IS NOT NULL
AND (p1.trafficSerial = p2.trafficSerial)
AND (P1.sourceTraffic = P2.sourceTraffic)
AND (P1.sinkTraffic = P2.sinkTraffic)
where
p1.siteCodeID = #SiteId
One option is to create a computed column and create an index on that
This article discusses it http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/08/22/sql-server-computed-columns-index-and-performance/
ALTER TABLE dbo.portList ADD
traffic AS Convert(nvarchar,trafficSerial) +' ('+ sourceTraffic + ' - ' + sinkTraffic + ' )' PERSISTED
GO
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_portList_traffic
ON dbo.portList (traffic)
GO
select distinct traffic from dbo.portList
You should also make sure each of the columns in your join relationships have indexes on them:
p1.trafficSerial & p2.trafficSerial
P1.sourceTraffic & P2.sourceTraffic
P1.sinkTraffic & P2.sinkTraffic
and the column for your filter: p1.siteCodeID
this for surely help:
if you can remove distinct from your select statement this query will speed up quite a bit. many times, i handle distinct values over the client or web part of the system, like visual basic, php, c#, etc.
please, remove distinct keyword and time again your query after executing it at least twice.
however, if you cannot remove distinct then simply leave it there.
this is important: convert clustered index scan to clustered index seek or only index seek. that will speed up your query quite a bit. you acquire an index seek from an index scan by modifying the index. typically, a clustered index scan comes from a comparison on a column with a clustered index, which many times is a primary key. i suspect this column is portside.sitecodeid
best regards,
tonci korsano
I'm working on a project where we have to figure out if a given field is potentially a company name versus an address.
In taking a very broad swipe at it, we are going under the assumption that if this field contains no numbers, odds are it is a name vs. a street address (we're aiming for the 80% case, knowing some will have to be done manually).
So now to the question at hand. Given a table with, for the sake of simplicity, a single varchar(100) column, how could I find those records who have no numeric characters at any position within the field?
For example:
"Main Street, Suite 10A" --Do not return this.
"A++ Billing" --Should be returned
"XYZ Corporation" --Should be returned
"100 First Ave, Apt 20" --Should not be returned
Thanks in advance!
Sql Server allows for a regex-like syntax for range [0-9] or Set [0123456789] to be specified in a LIKE operator, which can be used with the any string wildcard (%). For example:
select * from Address where StreetAddress not like '%[0-9]%';
The wildcard % at the start of the like will obviously hurt performance (Scans are likely), but in your case this seems inevitable.
Another MSDN Reference.
select * from table where column not like '%[0-9]%'
This query returns you all rows from table where column does not contain any of the digits from 0 to 9.
I like the simple regex approach, but for the sake of discussion will mention this alternative which uses PATINDEX.
SELECT InvoiceNumber from Invoices WHERE PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', InvoiceNumber) = 0
This worked for me .
select total_employee_count from company_table where total_employee_count like '%[^0-9]%'
This returned all rows that contains non numeric values including 2-3 ..
This Query to list out Tables created with numeric Characters
select * from SYSOBJECTS where xtype='u' and name like '%[0-9]%'
I'm currently working on an application where we have a SQL-Server database and I need to get a full text search working that allows us to search people's names.
Currently the user can enter a into a name field that searches 3 different varchar cols. First, Last, Middle names
So say I have 3 rows with the following info.
1 - Phillip - J - Fry
2 - Amy - NULL - Wong
3 - Leo - NULL - Wong
If the user enters a name such as 'Fry' it will return row 1. However if they enter Phillip Fry, or Fr, or Phil they get nothing.. and I don't understand why its doing this. If they search for Wong they get rows 2 and 3 if they search for Amy Wong they again get nothing.
Currently the query is using CONTAINSTABLE but I have switched that with FREETEXTTABLE, CONTAINS, and FREETEXT without any noticeable differences in the results. The table methods are be preferred because they return the same results but with ranking.
Here is the query.
....
#Name nvarchar(100),
....
--""s added to prevent crash if searching on more then one word.
DECLARE #SearchString varchar(100)
SET #SearchString = '"'+#Name+'"'
SELECT Per.Lastname, Per.Firstname, Per.MiddleName
FROM Person as Per
INNER JOIN CONTAINSTABLE(Person, (LastName, Firstname, MiddleName), #SearchString)
AS KEYTBL
ON Per.Person_ID = KEYTBL.[KEY]
WHERE KEY_TBL.RANK > 2
ORDER BY KEYTBL.RANK DESC;
....
Any Ideas...? Why this full text search is not working correctly ?
If you're just searching people's names, it might be in your best interest to not even use the full text index. Full text index makes sense when you have large text fields, but if you're mostly dealing with one word per field, I'm not sure how much extra you would get out of full text indexes. Waiting for the full text index to reindex itself before you can search for new records can be one of the many problems.
You could just make a query such as the following. Split your searchstring on spaces, and create a list of the search terms.
Select FirstName,MiddleName,LastName
From person
WHERE
Firstname like #searchterm1 + '%'
or MiddleName like #searchterm1 + '%'
or LastName like #searchterm1 + '%'
or Firstname like #searchterm2 + '%'
etc....
FreeTextTable should work.
INNER JOIN FREETEXTTABLE(Person, (LastName, Firstname, MiddleName), #SearchString)
#SearchString should contain the values like 'Phillip Fry' (one long string containing all of the lookup strings separated by spaces).
If you would like to search for Fr or Phil, you should use asterisk: Phil* and Fr*
'Phil' is looking for exactly the word 'Phil'. 'Phil*' is looking for every word which is starting with 'Phil'
Thanks for the responses guys I finally was able to get it to work. With part of both Biri, and Kibbee's answers. I needed to add * to the string and break it up on spaces in order to work. So in the end I got
....
#Name nvarchar(100),
....
--""s added to prevent crash if searching on more then one word.
DECLARE #SearchString varchar(100)
--Added this line
SET #SearchString = REPLACE(#Name, ' ', '*" OR "*')
SET #SearchString = '"*'+#SearchString+'*"'
SELECT Per.Lastname, Per.Firstname, Per.MiddleName
FROM Person as Per
INNER JOIN CONTAINSTABLE(Person, (LastName, Firstname, MiddleName), #SearchString)
AS KEYTBL
ON Per.Person_ID = KEYTBL.[KEY]
WHERE KEY_TBL.RANK > 2
ORDER BY KEYTBL.RANK DESC;
....
There are more fields being searched upon I just simplified it for the question, sorry about that, I didn't think it would effect the answer. It actually searches a column that has a csv of nicknames and a notes column as well.
Thanks for the help.
Another approach could be to abstract the searching away from the individual fields.
In other words create a view on your data which turns all the split fields like firstname lastname into concatenated fields i.e. full_name
Then search on the view. This would likely make the search query simpler.
You might want to check out Lucene.net as an alternative to Full Text.