Selecting a word from all the columns in a table

  • hi

    Is there a way we can select for a particular word from all the columns in a particular table rather than specifying every column in a where statemet

    I ahve a table with 1 coulmns a-z, and i am trying to find the word test in all the columns, as of now i am using

    select * from 1 where

    a like '%Test%' or b like '%test%' and so on

    can i use any other meathod for this select where all column donot have to be specified fo that table

  • 2 approaches that you might want to try that I can think of off the top of my head.

    1. where a + b + c + d + c ... like '%test%' ie concatenate all of the columns that you are searching for together. Very inefficient.

    2. Set up full-text indexing on the table for the columns that you are searching and then use Where Contains(*,'test')

    Hope that this provides a little help to get you in the right direction. For information on Full-Text indexing http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142571.aspx

  • thanks Rich

    concatenation seems to be my only option as full text indexing is not set up on the DB where i am trying to use contains

    is there any other way i can accomplish this

  • here's something i put together a long time ago; this requires one tablescan for the EXISTS() of every table that has a char/varchar/nchar/nvarchar column in it's definition...

    so if you have any MillionBillionRow tables, you better not run this on production.

    if it finds anything that matches, it produces a SQL you can run separately so you can review the results:

    Also, i never bothered to update it for SQL 2005 + to consider schema names...it's just assuming everything is dbo.

    example results:

    SELECT * FROM [CMCONTACT] WHERE [BIRTHDAY] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSADDRESS] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSADDRESS2] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSEMAIL] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSFAX] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSPHONE] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSPHONEEXT] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [BUSZIPCODE] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [CELLPHONE] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [EDITEDBY] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [FIRSTNAME] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [IDNUMBER] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [LASTNAME] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [MIDDLENAME] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [PERADDRESS] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [PERADDRESS2] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [PEREMAIL] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [PERPHONE] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [PERZIPCODE] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [SALUTATION] LIKE '%TEST%' OR [TITLE] LIKE '%TEST%'

    the procedure:

    DROP PROCEDURE UGLYSEARCH

    go

    CREATE PROCEDURE UGLYSEARCH

    -- EXEC UGLYSEARCH 'TEST'

    -- EXEC UGLYSEARCH 'TEST',1

    @SEARCHSTRING VARCHAR(50),

    @SEARCHBYCOLUMN INT = 0

    AS

    SET NOCOUNT ON

    DECLARE @SQL VARCHAR(max),

    @TABLENAME VARCHAR(60),

    @COLUMNNAME VARCHAR(60),

    @COLZ VARCHAR(max)

    CREATE TABLE #RESULTS(TBLNAME VARCHAR(60),COLNAME VARCHAR(60),SQL VARCHAR(7800))

    SELECT

    SYSOBJECTS.NAME AS TBLNAME,

    SYSCOLUMNS.NAME AS COLNAME,

    TYPE_NAME(SYSCOLUMNS.XTYPE) AS DATATYPE

    INTO #FKFINDER

    FROM SYSOBJECTS

    INNER JOIN SYSCOLUMNS ON SYSOBJECTS.ID=SYSCOLUMNS.ID

    WHERE SYSOBJECTS.XTYPE='U'

    AND TYPE_NAME(SYSCOLUMNS.XTYPE) IN ('VARCHAR','NVARCHAR','CHAR','NCHAR')

    AND SYSCOLUMNS.LENGTH >= LEN(@SEARCHSTRING)

    ORDER BY TBLNAME,COLNAME

    IF @SEARCHBYCOLUMN = 0

    BEGIN

    DECLARE C1 CURSOR FOR

    SELECT DISTINCT TBLNAME FROM #FKFINDER ORDER BY TBLNAME

    OPEN C1

    FETCH NEXT FROM C1 INTO @TABLENAME

    WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS <> -1

    BEGIN

    SET @COLZ=''

    SELECT @COLZ= @COLZ + QUOTENAME(COLNAME) + ' LIKE ''%' + @SEARCHSTRING + '%'' OR ' FROM #FKFINDER WHERE TBLNAME=@TABLENAME

    --@COLZ has a trailing 'OR ' which must be removed

    SET @COLZ = SUBSTRING(@COLZ,1,LEN(@COLZ) -3)

    --PRINT @COLZ

    SET @SQL = 'IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM ' + QUOTENAME(@TABLENAME) + ' WHERE ' + @COLZ + ') INSERT INTO #RESULTS(TBLNAME,COLNAME,SQL) VALUES(''' + @TABLENAME + ''',''-'','' SELECT * FROM ' + QUOTENAME(@TABLENAME) + ' WHERE ' + REPLACE(@COLZ,'''','''''') + ''') ;'

    --PRINT @SQL

    EXEC (@SQL)

    FETCH NEXT FROM C1 INTO @TABLENAME

    END

    CLOSE C1

    DEALLOCATE C1

    END --IF

    ELSE

    BEGIN

    DECLARE C1 CURSOR FOR

    SELECT TBLNAME,COLNAME FROM #FKFINDER ORDER BY TBLNAME,COLNAME

    OPEN C1

    FETCH NEXT FROM C1 INTO @TABLENAME,@COLUMNNAME

    WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS <> -1

    BEGIN

    SET @COLZ=''

    SELECT @COLZ= @COLZ + QUOTENAME(COLNAME) + ' LIKE ''%' + @SEARCHSTRING + '%'' OR ' FROM #FKFINDER WHERE TBLNAME=@TABLENAME

    --@COLZ has a trailing 'OR ' which must be removed

    SET @COLZ = SUBSTRING(@COLZ,1,LEN(@COLZ) -3)

    --SET @SQL = 'SELECT ''' + @TABLENAME + ''' AS TABLENAME,''' + @COLUMNNAME + ''' AS COLUMNNAME,* FROM ' + @TABLENAME + ' WHERE ' + @COLUMNNAME + ' LIKE ''%' + @SEARCHSTRING + '%'''

    SET @SQL = 'IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM ' + QUOTENAME(@TABLENAME) + ' WHERE ' + QUOTENAME(@COLUMNNAME) + ' LIKE ''%' + @SEARCHSTRING + '%'') INSERT INTO #RESULTS(TBLNAME,COLNAME,SQL) VALUES(''' + QUOTENAME(@TABLENAME) + ''',''' + QUOTENAME(@COLUMNNAME) + ''','' SELECT * FROM ' + QUOTENAME(@TABLENAME) + ' WHERE ' + QUOTENAME(@COLUMNNAME) + ' LIKE ''''' + @SEARCHSTRING + ''''' '') ;'

    PRINT @SQL

    EXEC (@SQL)

    FETCH NEXT FROM C1 INTO @TABLENAME,@COLUMNNAME

    END

    CLOSE C1

    DEALLOCATE C1

    END --ELSE

    SELECT * FROM #RESULTS

    Lowell


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