SQL - LIKE Clause

The SQL LIKE clause is used in a SQL WHERE clause to search for a specified pattern in a specified column. There are two wildcards which are often used in conjunction with the LIKE operator.

% : represents zero, one or multiple characters.
_ : represents one character.

Note: In MS Access, asterisk (*) is used instead of percentage sign (%) and a question mark (?) is used instead of (_).

Syntax

The syntax for using LIKE Clause is given below:

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
WHERE column LIKE pattern;

The below table describes patterns which is used with LIKE operator and uses (%) and (_).

Pattern	Description
'J%'	A value that start with "J".
'%n'	A value that end with "n".
'%oh%'	A value that have "oh" in any position.
'_o%'	A value that have "o" in the second position.
'J_%'	A value that start with "J" and have at least 2 characters.
'J%n'	A value that start with "J" and ends with "n".

Example:

Consider a database tables called Employee with the following records:

EmpID	Name	City	Age	Salary
1	John	London	25	3000
2	Marry	New York	24	2750
3	Jo	Paris	27	2800
4	Kim	Amsterdam	30	3100
5	Ramesh	New Delhi	28	3000
6	Huang	Beijing	28	2800

To fetch all records from Employee table where Salary starts with 3 and ends with 0, the SQL query is:
```
SELECT * FROM Employee
WHERE Salary LIKE '3%0';
```
This will produce the result as shown below:

EmpID Name City Age Salary

1 John London 25 3000

4 Kim Amsterdam 30 3100

5 Ramesh New Delhi 28 3000

In My Access, the same can be achieved using below query:
```
/* My Access SQL code */
SELECT * FROM Employee
WHERE Salary LIKE '3*0';
```