The LIKE Operator

It is possible to use more advanced techniques for finding rows where a mathematical operation doesn't quite fit; for example, say someone is trying to track down a customer, but doesn't know the customer's full name, or does know the first part of his or her surname but doesn't know how to spell the full name.

Suppose you know that the surname ends in “Smith” but you cannot recall the first part of the surname. So how would this be put into a query? There is a keyword that you can use as part of the WHERE statement, called LIKE. This will use pattern matching to find the relevant rows within a SQL Server table using the information provided.

The LIKE operator can come with one of four operators, which are used alongside string values that you want to find. Each of the four specifiers is detailed in the following list. They can be used together, and using one does not exclude using any others.