Question

Can I, in a neat way do:

SELECT * 
FROM tablename 
WHERE * LIKE '%something%';

Without having to do:

SELECT * 
FROM tablename 
WHERE ColA LIKE '%something%' 
   OR ColB LIKE '%something%' ...;

Running SQL Server 2008, I get error:

“Cannot use a CONTAINS or FREETEXT predicate on table or indexed view
‘tablename’ because it is not full-text indexed.

I don’t have full text index 🙂

Answer 1

To build on @Bob Probst’s idea, you might try dynamic SQL like this:

-- Set these!
declare @tableName nvarchar(128)= 'MyTableName'
declare @searchString nvarchar(max)= '%something%'

-- Build SQL query
declare @sql nvarchar(max)
select @sql = isnull(@sql + 'or ', 'select * from ' + @tableName + ' where ' )
    + '[' + column_name + '] like ''' + replace(@searchString, '''', '''''') + ''' '
from information_schema.columns
where table_name = @tableName
    -- Could use this where clause for only comparing string fields (or eliminating image and such)
    --and data_type in ('varchar', 'char','nvarchar', 'nchar')

-- Run SQL query
print (@sql) -- For debug
exec (@sql)