Question

I have the following Oracle SQL query. Given a given name and surname, it finds all records with One name and the initial of the other, in either order. I have created the score column to place likely matches at the top of the results set.

SELECT
  surname,
  givenname,
  (CASE WHEN surname = 'Smith' THEN 2 ELSE 0)
    + (CASE WHEN givenname = 'John' THEN 1 ELSE 0)
    AS score
FROM person
WHERE (surname = 'Smith' AND givenname LIKE 'J%')
  OR  (surname LIKE 'S%' AND givenname = 'John')
  OR  (surname = 'John' AND givenname LIKE 'S%')
  OR  (surname LIKE 'J%' AND givenname = 'Smith')
ORDER BY
  score DESC,
  surname ASC,
  givenname ASC;

The problem is the score is giving an error at the location of the +. The IDE reports:

Syntax error, expected:
/
*
|

And execution reports:

SQL Error: ORA-00905: missing keyword

What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way to calculate the score?

Answer 1

You are missing the END on your CASE statements:

SELECT
  surname,
  givenname,
  (CASE WHEN surname = 'Smith' THEN 2 ELSE 0 END)  -- < add END
    + (CASE WHEN givenname = 'John' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)  -- < add END
    AS score
FROM person
WHERE (surname = 'Smith' AND givenname LIKE 'J%')
  OR  (surname LIKE 'S%' AND givenname = 'John')
  OR  (surname = 'John' AND givenname LIKE 'S%')
  OR  (surname LIKE 'J%' AND givenname = 'Smith')
ORDER BY
  score DESC,
  surname ASC,
  givenname ASC;