Slide 11.11: The WHERE clause
Slide 11.13: The UPDATE statement
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The WHERE Clause (Cont.)

The LIKE Condition
The LIKE condition is used to specify a search for a pattern in a column. 
 SELECT  column  FROM  table
   WHERE  column  LIKE  pattern

A ‘%’ sign can be used to define wildcards (missing letters in the pattern) both before and after the pattern.

Using LIKE
LastName FirstName Address City
Hansen Ola Timoteivn 10 Sandnes
Svendson Tove Borgvn 23 Sandnes
Pettersen Kari Storgt 20 Stavanger
Rasmussen   Storgt 67   
 SQL> select  *  from  Persons  where  City = Sandnes;
                                        *
 ERROR at line 1:
 ORA-00904: "SANDNES": invalid identifier


 SQL> select  *  from  Persons  where  FirstName  like  'O%';

 LASTNAME          FIRSTNAME          ADDRESS            CITY
 --------------    --------------     --------------     ------------
 Hansen            Ola                Timoteivn 10       Sandnes


 SQL> select  *  from  Persons  where  FirstName  like  '%e';

 LASTNAME          FIRSTNAME          ADDRESS            CITY
 --------------    --------------     --------------     ------------
 Svendson          Tove               Borgvn 23          Sandnes


 SQL> select  *  from Persons  where  FirstName  like  '%ar%';

 LASTNAME          FIRSTNAME          ADDRESS            CITY
 --------------    --------------     --------------     ------------
 Pettersen         Kari               Storgt 20          Stavanger


The following is an SQL test area from w3schools.com where the Customers table may be created by the following command: 
   SQL> create table  Customers (
     2    CustomerID   varchar(16),
     3    CompanyName  varchar(32), 
     4    ContactName  varchar(32),
     5    Address      varchar(64),
     6    City         varchar(32), 
     7    PostalCode   varchar(16), 
     8    Country      varchar(32) );
Note that the Customers table is for read only.

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