How to fetch record on the basis of any one value from the column of two comma separated values

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Hello,
May be the Question's title is not correctly defined what i actually wanted to ask. Here is the more specific description of my question

I have a following table 'User' in my database which has a column i.e. Category which contains multiple values but separated by commas

S.no. Name Category
1 Ankit Ex Soldier, Senior Citizen
2 Ritu Widow, Senior Citizen
3 Akash Ex soldier

I wanted to search the record on the basis of category

for eg. If i search

SQL

select * from User where Category='Senior Citizen'

Then it must show Ankit and Ritu record.
How to do this.
plz help
thanks

Posted 6-Jul-15 21:15pm

Member 11589183

Updated 6-Jul-15 21:22pm

v2

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Herman<T>.Instance 7-Jul-15 3:25am

where category LIKE '%Senior Citizen%'

Member 11589183 7-Jul-15 3:35am

thank u so much :)

4 solutions

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Arul Nehru · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-06T21:24:00

Solution 1

Try,

select * from User where Category like '%Senior Citizen%'

Posted 6-Jul-15 21:24pm

Arul Nehru

Menon Santosh · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-06T21:30:00

Solution 3

the easiest solution is
you can use LIKE clause

SQL

SELECT * FROM USER WHERE Category LIKE '%Senior Citizen%'

Posted 6-Jul-15 21:30pm

Menon Santosh

Herman<T>.Instance · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-06T21:25:00

Solution 2

SQL

where category LIKE '%Senior Citizen%'

More about LIKE keyword in SQL:
see here[^].

Posted 6-Jul-15 21:25pm

Herman<T>.Instance

Updated 6-Jul-15 21:26pm

v2

OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-06T21:41:00

Basically, although you can do it, you shouldn't. Storing data as comma delimited values in an SQL column is a bad idea - it's hard to work with, it's very hard to edit, and it wastes huge amounts of space.
Instead, create a second table which holds your categories:

ID     Description
1      Ex Soldier
2      Senior Citizen
3      Widow

And a third table which correlates those values to your User table:

ID     UserID     CatID
1      1          1
2      1          2
3      2          3
4      2          2
5      3          1

You then use JOINs to cross correlate the tables.
It may seem more complex to set up - and it is - but it's a lot faster for SQL to process (particularly when you get a serious number of records), it's a lot more space efficient, and it's a lot easier to update and maintain later. It also eliminates the possibility of a user entering "Ex-soldier" instead of "Ex Soldier" and your text based checks failing as a result.