Wildcard Search in SQL Query

There are times when you don’t have a specific value to find but you might have to use the general pattern and want to get the records that match that pattern.

You can use the LIKE clause in this case and use the the wildcards for the search expression.

You can use the wild characters like % , _ , [..] , [^..] where % represents the string with zero or more characters. The _ represents the single character. The [] can be used to specify the list of characters like [A-Z]. [^..] represents the single character from the list that is present.

For example , you want to get the TOP 1000 department records whose name starts with E. Your query will look like the one below.

/****** Script for SelectTopNRows command from SSMS  ******/
SELECT TOP 1000 DepartmentID
      ,Name
      ,GroupName
      ,ModifiedDate
  FROM Department
  WHERE  Name LIKE 'E%';