Like

[shakti5385]

Hi all
Often we use = and LIKE in the SQL Query , But I want to know that what is the difference between = AND LIKE

SELECT * FROM Table WHERE Name ='shakti'

SELECT * FROM Table WHERE Name LIKE 'shakti'

What is the difference?
Thanks

[Ecniv]

In your example - nothing

However if you were to put
SELECT * FROM Table WHERE Name LIKE 'shak*' or
SELECT * FROM Table WHERE Name LIKE 'shak%' (depending on DAO/ADO respectively)
Then the like does a pattern match check instead of exact match.


Access however will match "ShAk" and "shak" (I think) on = .... you'd have to try some test data to confirm.

Does that help.

[Hack]

The wildcard characters are different between databases as well.

I believe Access requires the use of a * whereas SQL Server uses a % and does not recognize the * as valid. SQL Server won't give you an error, but you also don't get any results. As a test, I just did (from Query Analyser)

select * from tblappealro where prov_cd like '0%'

And got 190 returns. When I did

select * from tblappealro where prov_cd like '0*'

I got no error, but I also got no returns.

[szlamany]

LIKE will ignore indexes and do a table scan. That is a huge difference.

= on a column that is an index will usually use that index - resulting in a speed increase for the query.

LIKE, as already stated, is for wild-card searching - and if needed for that reason is an appropriate solution.

btw - in MS SQL SERVER - case-sensitivity on searches in a server option - not sure how ACCESS handles it...