Question

Suppose I have a description column that contains

Column Description
------------------
I live in USA
I work as engineer 

I have an other table containing the list of countries, since USA (country name) is mentioned in first row, I need that row.

In second case there is no country name so I don’t need that column.

Can you please clarify

Answer 1

You may want to try something like the following:

SELECT   cd.* 
FROM     column_description cd
JOIN     countries c ON (INSTR(cd.description, c.country_name) > 1);

If you are using SQL Server, you should be able to use the CHARINDEX() function instead of INSTR(), which is available for MySQL and Oracle. You can also use LIKE as other answers have suggested.

Test case:

CREATE TABLE column_description (description varchar(100));
CREATE TABLE countries (country_name varchar(100));

INSERT INTO column_description VALUES ('I live in USA');
INSERT INTO column_description VALUES ('I work as engineer');

INSERT INTO countries VALUES ('USA');

Result:

+---------------+
| description   |
+---------------+
| I live in USA |
+---------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)