Question

I have a text column and the data in the text columns are as below:

Rob goes to school,get punished
Rob goes to school
Rob does not goes to school,get punished

When trying to write a query using case statement like

CASE 
    WHEN (PATINDEX('%Rob goes to school%',value) > 0) OR
         (PATINDEX('%Rob is ill%',value) > 0 ) AND
         (PATINDEX(%get punished%',value) > 0) THEN
           'DONE'

It should select only the 1st statement but instead it is picking both the 1st and 2nd statement with ‘DONE’. Any suggestion how to do a pattern match in this case?
I am using SQL Sever 2005/2008

Answer 1

Operator precedence and not enough parenthesis probably

You have x OR y AND z which is actually x OR (y AND z). Do you want want (x OR y) AND z?

• The 2nd statement give true OR (false AND false) which gives true
• You want (true OR false) AND false to give false

So the SQL should be

CASE WHEN
   (
      PATINDEX('%Rob goes to school%', value) > 0
      OR
      PATINDEX('%Rob is ill%', value) > 0
   )
   AND
   (PATINDEX(%get punished%', value) > 0) THEN 'DONE'
...