Question

I have an SQL with around 50 “OR” condition and all with “Like” operator. I execute this SQL from a VB Access code.

But the query fails saying, “Expression Too Long” error (mostly I think, because it exceeds 1024 characters in the query grid.

SELECT * 
  FROM <My Database> 
 WHERE (
        [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = '' 
        OR [Title] = ''
       ) 
       AND (
            [TITLE] LIKE '*Afghanistan*' 
            OR [TITLE] LIKE '*Term1*' 
            OR [TITLE] LIKE '*Term2*' 
            OR [TITLE] LIKE '*Term3*' 
            OR ..<around 40 like these> 
            OR [COUNTRY] LIKE '*Country1*' 
            OR ...<around 40 like these>
           );

Any ideas or suggestions as to how to work around this issue?

Answer 1

Suggestions: insert parameter values into base “staging” tables (possibly in another temp database) and create seni joins to these tables using EXISTS. Use ALIKE (rather than LIKE), which always uses Standard SQL wildcard characters (%).

SELECT * 
  FROM MyTable AS m
 WHERE EXISTS (
               SELECT * 
                 FROM MyExactParams AS x
                WHERE m.Title = x.Title
              )
       AND (
            EXISTS (
                    SELECT * 
                      FROM MyPatternParams AS p
                     WHERE m.Title ALIKE '%' + p.Title + '%'
                   )
            OR EXISTS (
                       SELECT * 
                         FROM MyPatternCountries AS c
                        WHERE m.Country ALIKE '%' + c.Country + '%'
                      )
           );