Question

I have a very simple CLR Function for doing Regex Matching

public static SqlBoolean RegExMatch(SqlString input, SqlString pattern)
{
    if (input.IsNull || pattern.IsNull)
        return SqlBoolean.False;

    return Regex.IsMatch(input.Value, pattern.Value, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
}

It allows me to write a SQL Statement Like.

SELECT * FROM dbo.table1 WHERE dbo.RegexMatch(column1, '[0-9][A-Z]') = 1
-- match entries in col1 like 1A, 2B etc...

I’m just thinking it would be nice to reformulate that query so it could be called like

SELECT * FROM dbo.table1 WHERE column1 REGEXLIKE '[0-9][A-Z]'

Is it possible to create new comparison operators using CLR Code. (I’m guessing from my brief glance around the web that the answer is NO, but no harm asking)

Answer 1

No you cannot. You can create functions, stored procedures, triggers and so forth – but there’s no provision to create new T-SQL operators or commands. Not in SQL Server 2008R2 either, as far as I can tell.