oracle sql how to match name split through 3 columns? - sql

Question

This database is not mine so i cannot alter it to a single name column (unfortunately).
**table1:**
name1,name2,name3
john,mega,rambo
john,master,travolta
john,super,connor
i'm sending query string $qs to a php file via ajax
file.php?qs=john%rambo
i want it to query the oracle database and return the name "John MEga Rambo", so i thought this would work but it doesn't:
SQL:
SELECT CONCAT(CONCAT(name1,name2),name3) as name
FROM table1
WHERE name LIKE '%{$qs}%'
I guess the biggest problem here is that someone can search by name1 or name2 / name1 or name3. Any ideas ?

Answer 1

Presumably you're getting an invalid identifier error. You can't referance a column alias in the same level of query it's defined (except in order by), because of the order the query is parsed and executed.
You could use a CTE or an inline view (subquery):
SELECT name
FROM (
SELECT CONCAT(CONCAT(name1,name2),name3) as name
FROM table1
)
WHERE name LIKE '%{$qs}%'
With some dummy data:
create table table1 (name1 varchar2(10), name2 varchar2(10), name3 varchar2(10));
insert into table1 (name1, name2, name3) values ('john', 'mega', 'rambo');
insert into table1 (name1, name2, name3) values ('john', 'master', 'travolta');
insert into table1 (name1, name2, name3) values ('john', 'super', 'connor');
that query - with {$qs} replaced with rambo - gets:
NAME
------------------------------
johnmegarambo
As you can see concat won't automatically add whitespace, so you might find the concatenation operator easier:
SELECT name
FROM (
SELECT name1 ||' '|| name2 ||' '|| name3 as name
FROM table1
)
WHERE name LIKE '%{$qs}%'
NAME
--------------------------------
john mega rambo
But if you're looking for more exact matches you might want to check each column instead:
SELECT name1 ||' '|| name2 ||' '|| name3 as name
FROM table1
WHERE name1 = '{$qs}'
OR name2 = '{$qs}'
OR name3 = '{$qs}'
Maybe you want the flexibility to search for partial matches though.
As a further consideration, by default you can only search for values exactly matching the case of the search string - so with your data, searching for RAMBO wouldn't find a match. There are a couple of ways around that if it's an issue for you.

Answer 2

Thank you Alex Poole for the replies, those didn't quite solve the problem BUT it pointed me in the right direction! It seems like oracle is a little bit picky with syntax, so a simple HAVING that would work in MySQL won't work on oracle. I'll post both solutions for ORACLE and MySQL
MySQL:
SELECT CONCAT(CONCAT(name1,name2),name3) AS name
FROM table1
HAVING name LIKE '{%$qs}%'
ORACLE
WITH table1 as ( SELECT CONCAT(CONCAT(name1,name2),name3) as name
FROM table1)
select * from table1 where name like '%{$qs}%'