Question

Suppose we’ve looked for “sometext“ in a text like “bla bla bla bla bla bla sometext bla bla bla bla bla sometext bla bla bla bla bla”.

I expect “bla bla bla bla bla bla sometext bla bla bla bla bla …”
OR
“… bla bla bla bla bla bla sometext bla bla bla bla bla …”

what do you suggest to only display a range of results. Like how Google or vBulletin forum search behave.

I use ASP Classic or Javascript as programming language but a pseudocode will be fine either.

Answer 1

This query will find the first occurence of your search text, and then show the next 135 characters:

select
  left(right (myColumn, 1+(len(myColumn) - charindex('sometext', myColumn))),135)
from
some_table where myColumn like '%sometext%'

You could edit the 1+ to include more characters that occur before your search text.