CONTAINS Conditions

The syntax for CONTAINS conditions for a column with a WD index is as follows:

{ column-name [ NOT ] CONTAINS ( ( word1 [ , word2 ] [ , word3 ] … ) 

The column-name must be a CHAR, VARCHAR, or LONG VARCHAR (CLOB) column in a base table, and must have a WD index. The word1, word2 and word3 expressions must be string constants no longer than 255 bytes, each containing exactly one word. The length of that word cannot exceed the maximum permitted word length of the word index of the column.

Without the NOT keyword, the CONTAINS condition is TRUE if column-name contains each of the words, UNKNOWN if column-name is the NULL value, and FALSE otherwise. The NOT keyword reverses these values but leaves UNKNOWN unchanged.

For example, this search condition:

varchar_col CONTAINS ('cat', ‘mat’)

is TRUE if the value of varchar_col is The cat is on the mat. If the value of varchar_col is The cat chased the mouse, this condition is FALSE.

When SAP Sybase IQ executes a statement containing both LIKE and CONTAINS, the CONTAINS condition takes precedence.

Avoid using the CONTAINS predicate in a view that has a user-defined function, because the CONTAINS criteria are ignored. Use the LIKE predicate with wildcards instead, or issue the query outside of a view.

For information on using CONTAINS conditions with TEXT indexes, see Unstructured Data Analytics.