T-sql select

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T-sql select - like

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ggarcia 73023

Posted Thursday, October 04, 2012 4:05 PM

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Hello,
I'm new to these forums & need some help putting together a T-SQL query for selecting some info from my db. On the table I'm attempting to query there is a column called lastname that holds multiple last names for customers. Rows that have more than one last name are separated by a '/' character, no spaces are between the '/' and the last names.

I want to select customers with two last names, for instance customers like 'garcia/fish' or 'johnson-howard/bobby-ray'.

Is there a way to select only rows that have one '/' entered in the character string? I don't want last names like 'davis/cameron/lew'. Oh, forgot to mention that the column is of type nvarchar. I assume that something like:

select lastname
from HR.Employees
where lastname LIKE '[/]';

would select entries that have '/'s however I'm not getting any results & I need ONLY rows that have one '/'

Hope this makes sense, I realize it's a pretty vague example however I'd be extremely grateful if anyone here can help me.

Post #1368762

Evil Kraig F

Posted Thursday, October 04, 2012 4:09 PM

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Chain your charindexes.

Basically, you'll want a where clause that looks like this:

WHERE
	CHARINDEX( LastName, '/') > 0 -- / exists
	AND CHARINDEX( LastName, '/', CHARINDEX( LastName, '/') + 1) = 0 -- No second /s

I'll avoid discussing how much the design decision there makes me cringe... it's very denormalized.

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Post #1368764

dwain.c

Posted Thursday, October 04, 2012 6:21 PM

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Here's another way:

WHERE LEN(LastName) - 1 = LEN(REPLACE(LastName, '/', ''))

No loops! No CURSORs! No RBAR! Hoo-uh!

INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?

Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some!
Are you too recursively challenged?
Splitting strings based on patterns can be fast!

Post #1368788

ggarcia 73023

Posted Friday, October 05, 2012 3:16 PM

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Thank you both for the help, dwain I've used your example for getting the column information. It works great however it returns rows that begin with a '/' too which isn't exactly what I want. Is there a way to query only the last names with at least one character (letter or number) before the '/'? For example, last names like 'e/johnson' but not names like '/johnson'.

Post #1369328

gravitysucks

Posted Friday, October 05, 2012 4:40 PM

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AND SUBSTRING(LastName,1,1)<>'/' ---??

Post #1369343

CELKO

Posted Friday, October 05, 2012 5:50 PM

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>> On the table I'm attempting to query there is a column called lastname that holds multiple last names for customers. Rows that have more than one last name are separated by a '/' character, no spaces are between the '/' and the last names. <,

You are not just new to the forums, but have never read anything about RDBMS. A column is by definition, a scalar value. This is part of First Normal Form (1NF) and it is usually covered in the first 3-4 chapters of any book on the topic. What you have is an attempt at a variant record in several different 1950's threu 1970's file systems.

If you do nto care about being a good SQL programmer, there are several kludges for splitting this string into separate values.

I want to select customers with two last names, for instance customers like 'garcia/fish' or 'johnson-howard/bobby-ray'.

Books in Celko Series for Morgan-Kaufmann Publishing
Analytics and OLAP in SQL
Data and Databases: Concepts in Practice
Data, Measurements and Standards in SQL
SQL for Smarties
SQL Programming Style
SQL Puzzles and Answers
Thinking in Sets
Trees and Hierarchies in SQL

Post #1369351

dwain.c

Posted Friday, October 05, 2012 8:07 PM

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gravitysucks (10/5/2012)

AND SUBSTRING(LastName,1,1)<>'/' ---??

Yes or:

AND LEFT(LTRIM(LastName), 1) <> '/'

The LTRIM is in case there are blanks only leading up to the slash.

Post #1369361

Jeff Moden

Posted Saturday, October 06, 2012 1:17 PM

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CELKO (10/5/2012)

You are not just new to the forums, but have never read anything about RDBMS.

Backoff the new guy, Joe. You don't know if he created the denormalized data or not. Even if he did, that's not teaching and there's no need for that kind of comment.

What you have is an attempt at a variant record in several different 1950's threu 1970's file systems.

BWAA-HAAA!!! You always say stuff like that but aren't you still using a 1950s push-stack to convert Adjacency Lists to Nested Sets?

If you do nto care about being a good SQL programmer, there are several kludges for splitting this string into separate values.

Once again, you're totally out of line with such a comment. Good programmers will, in fact, use some of the "kludges" to normalize the data if they're allowed and to simply use the data if they're not. Heh... and it's not nearly as bad as the push-stack kludge. Wink

--Jeff Moden

"RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for "Row-By-Agonizing-Row".

First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
Stop thinking about what you want to do to a row... think, instead, of what you want to do to a column."

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Post #1369456

ggarcia 73023

Posted Monday, October 08, 2012 9:10 AM

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Thank you all for the samples, dwain.c I utilized your excerpt and it worked for me. I appreciate everyone's help!

Post #1369878

ScottPletcher

Posted Monday, October 08, 2012 10:26 AM

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SELECT lastname
FROM HR.Employees
WHERE
    lastname LIKE '%[/]%' AND
    lastname NOT LIKE '%[/]%[/]%'

SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP('07, '08, '09)
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Post #1369941

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