Searhing

Question

Hi all,
How do you make the below query to be able to return a record from the database when there is a full or partial match in vendor name field.
V.VNAMEL is a field for vendor name
Thank you
SELECT DISTINCT
V.VENDOR ,
R.ADDRNUM,
V.VNAMEL,
R.AADDR1,
R.ACITY,
R.ASTATE,
R.AZIPCODE,
R.APHONE,
TO_Char( (MAX(P.DATEPUR)), 'YYYY-MM-DD') as Purchase_Date
FROM VENDOR V,
VENDADDR R,
PLANHOLD P
WHERE V.VENDOR = R.VENDOR AND
P.VENDOR = R.VENDOR AND
(P.DATEPUR >= TO_DATE('2002-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD') )
AND V.VOBSOLET = 'N'

Answer 1

Thats what the % on both sides of the search string does. It allows for an infinite amount of characters before and after the word. As long as those letters appear together anywhere in the vendor name, it will be returned.
EX:
VENDOR NAME:  MICROSOFT
%MICRO%
%SOFT%
%MICROSOFT%All three of those search strings would return vendor Microsoft (and others depending on what else matched).