Performing Pattern Matching

Use the SQL LIKE operator and SQL wildcard strings in a SQL WHERE clause when you want to compare a value against a character string field so that the query returns database information based on commonalities. This is known as pattern matching and is a very common search scenario.

Usage example

For example, to return data for employees whose last name starts with AL and ends with anything, you would build a query that looks like this:

<CFQUERY NAME="GetEmployees" DATASOURCE="HRApp"> 
    SELECT FirstName, LastName,
    StartDate, Salary, Contract
    FROM    Employees
    WHERE   LastName LIKE 'AL%'
</CFQUERY>

The LIKE operator tells the database that the string that follows should be used for pattern matching.
The query retrieves records in the Employees table when their LastName column contains values starting with AL and ending with anything are retrieved to the page.
If you placed a wildcard before and after AL, you would retrieve any record in that column that contains AL.
Surround strings in SQL commands with single quotes (').

Note:

By default, SQL is not case-sensitive.