Question

I have a column called check_num (bank check number) as VARCHAR2 type in a payment_line table(Oracle).

The requirement is “I have to search all those checks which numbers are greater than 12345.

Please suggest how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

There most likely is a more elegant solution, but this should do the trick:

SELECT * 
FROM payment_line pl 
WHERE LENGTH(TRIM(TRANSLATE(pl.check_num, '0123456789',' '))) IS NULL 
   AND TRIM(TRANSLATE(pl.check_num, '0123456789','0123456789')) > 12345;

edit:

If I understand your comment to Adam Paynter, for input of:

0A132 
1A117 
2A123 
12D24 
02134 
11111 
12345 
21334 

and you used 1A117 as your comparison the resulting set would be:

2A123 
12D24 
02134 
11111 
12345 
21334

Can you confirm that both 02134 and 11111 should be in this result set? They dont seem to meet the requirements of > a value like 1A117. If, however, that was a typo, you can actually run a simple string comparison to get this set:

SELECT * 
FROM payment_line pl
WHERE pl.check_num > '1A117';

edit 2

OK, I think I see where you are going with this. You are looking to get the rows in the db that have been entered after the input row. If you look at my formatted list above, you will see that your result set is everything below your input string. So, with that in mind, i submit for your approval the following:

SELECT * 
FROM payment_line  
WHERE rowid > (select rowid from payment_line where check_num ='1A117');