Question

Here’s what the SQL code I’m using thus far looks like:

SELECT

    credentials.credential_id,
    clients.client_id,
    clients.client_name,
    services.service_id,
    services.service_name

FROM

    credentials

INNER JOIN

    clients ON clients.client_id = credentials.client_id

INNER JOIN

    services ON services.service_id = credentials.service_id

WHERE 

    services.service_name LIKE ?
    OR clients.client_name LIKE ?

As you can see, a record could be returned if either the service_name or client_name are matched to the value of my LIKE argument. This works well. Here are my questions:

1) While still providing a keyword search, how can I optimize this query to be as scalable as possible?

2) I would like MySQL to return the context for what was matched. In other words, I would like to be able to show the user why a particular record was returned by what the query matched. As you can tell, it could be either the service or client name, but when I expand this query, it could even be other items in another table. Does anyone have any resources to point me to regarding providing matched context in your MySQL queries?

Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

Add the LIKE expressions to the field list.

SELECT ...
  services.service_name LIKE ? AS service_matched,
  clients.client_name LIKE ? AS client_matched
FROM
   ...