Question

In my table I store first name in the fName column and last name in the lName column, now I need to search them with a query, but I don’t know the SQL!

example

   lName | fName  
-----------------
Tendulkar| Sachin   
Ganguly  | Sourav   
Khan     | Zaheer  
Dhoni    | Mahendra Singh  

The user should get MAHENDRA SINGH DHONI if he searches for Mahendra Dhoni!

Answer 1

select concat(fName,' ',lName) fullname
from tbl
where concat(' ',fName,' ',lName,' ') like '% Mahendra %'
  and concat(' ',fName,' ',lName,' ') like '% dhoni %'

This will most certainly put to rest any hopes of a well performing query

A variation on the theme

select concat(fName,' ',lName) fullname
from tbl
where (concat(fName,' ',lName) like '%Mahendra%dhoni%'
    or concat(lName,' ',fName) like '%Mahendra%dhoni%')

The 2nd version doesn’t care about full part matching, e.g. dhoni will match madhonie

---

Both of these queries find the name correctly. Note that there are % before and after the name to match, as well as % for every space in the name.

create table tbl (fname varchar(100), lname varchar(100));
insert tbl select 'Mahendra singh', 'dhoni';

select concat(fName,' ',lName) fullname
from tbl
where (concat(fName,' ',lName) like '%Mahendra%dhoni%'
    or concat(lName,' ',fName) like '%Mahendra%dhoni%');

select concat(fName,' ',lName) fullname
from tbl
where (concat(fName,' ',lName) like '%dhoni%Mahendra%'
    or concat(lName,' ',fName) like '%dhoni%Mahendra%');