Question

I’m going to perform a search in my SQL server DB (ASP.NET, VS2010,C#), user types a phrase and I should search this phrase in several fields, how is it possible? do we have functions such as CONTAINS() in SQL server? can I perform my search using normal queries or I should work in my queries using C# functions?

for instance I have 3 fields in my table which can contain user search phrase, is it OK to write following sql command? (for instance user search phrase is GAME)

select * from myTable where columnA='GAME' or columnB='GAME' or columnC='GAME

I have used AND between different conditions, but can I use OR? how can I search inside my table fields? if one of my fields contains the phrase GAME, how can I find it? columnA=’GAME’ finds only those fields that are exactly ‘GAME’, is it right?

I’m a bit confused about my search approach, please help me, thanks guys

Answer 1

OR works fine if you want at least one of the conditions to be true.

If you want to search inside your text strings you can use LIKE

select * from myTable where columnA like '%GAME%' or columnB like '%GAME%' or columnC like '%GAME%'

Note that % is the wildcard.
If you want to find everything that begins with ‘GAME’ you type LIKE 'GAME%', if you allow ‘GAME’ to be in the middle you need % in both ends.