Searching Sybase databases

Okay, so you've created your database, you've created your tables, and you've created your indexes, now what? Well, now you can benefit from all that work by searching through the data. The number of ways for searching your data is staggering. You can

• do simple searches where you are trying to find one value from one column and you know exactly the value you are looking for
• use wildcard searches when you know part of the data, but not all of it (for instance, you can't remember John's last name)
• search more than one column (i.e., all the people named John in Seattle, or for all the Johns and Joans)
• do work on the results of the search (for instance, you could add all the values of your stamps together to tell you how much your collection is worth)
• search multiple tables

and more.

What does all that mean for you? Well, it means if you can think of a way to search your data, you can probably do it in Sybase. Figuring out how may not be trivial, but you can do it.

The basic search command is called select. It is very complex. This section will only cover basic searches. If you need more than that, well, then it's time to dig through Sybase's documentation.

Last updated: 1997/06/25 20:14:58 UT
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/db/sybase/search.html