SQL testing for data in column using LIKE - sql

Question

I have a query I am writing to test for permission access. One of the columns I have to look through is in the format of ABC|DEF|GHI|JKL and I need to see if there is a value that exists in that column.
The problem is, there are multiple things I need to test for which is causing my query to throw an error due to the subquery returning multiple values.
-- Default permission
DECLARE #hasAccess BIT = 0;
-- Define our temp data
DECLARE #managers AS TABLE(personnelID VARCHAR(10))
-- Insert our data for the manager test logic
INSERT INTO #managers( personnelID ) VALUES ( 'ABC' )
INSERT INTO #managers( personnelID ) VALUES ( 'XYZ' )
SELECT *
FROM Employees AS e
WHERE e.QID = #QID
AND e.PersonnelIDList LIKE '%' + (SELECT personnelID FROM #managers) + '%'
How can I go about testing to see if any one of the values in #managers exists in the column value (example column value: ABC|DEF|GHI|JKL) exists in the records.

Answer 1

In like clause, you're only allowed to have the subquery return a single result.
Join to your #managers table and use the like within the join clause.
-- Default permission
DECLARE #hasAccess BIT = 0;
-- Define our temp data
DECLARE #managers AS TABLE(personnelID VARCHAR(10))
-- Insert our data for the manager test logic
INSERT INTO #managers( personnelID ) VALUES ( 'ABC' )
INSERT INTO #managers( personnelID ) VALUES ( 'XYZ' )
SELECT
e.*
FROM
Employees AS e
inner join #managers as m
on e.PersonnelIDList LIKE '%' + m.personnelID + '%'
WHERE
e.QID = #QID

Answer 2

You should not be storing lists as strings. This is just a bad idea. There should be a separate table instead.
Sometimes, we are stuck with other people's really bad design decisions. In this case, you can use an exists subquery:
SELECT e.*
FROM Employees e
WHERE e.QID = #QID AND
EXISTS (SELECT 1
FROM #managers m
WHERE '|' + e.PersonnelIDList + '|' LIKE '%|' +personnelID + '|%'
);