You can use wildcard characters for columns and column names. You might want to create a table called special_discounts in the pubs2 database to run a price projection for a special sale:
create table special_discounts
id_type char(3), discount int)
insert into special_discounts
values("BU%", 10)
...
The table should contain the following data:
id_type discount ------- ----------- BU% 10 PS% 12 MC% 15
The following query uses wildcard characters in id_type in the where clause:
select title_id, discount, price, price - (price*discount/100) from special_discounts, titles where title_id like id_type
Here are the results of that query:
title_id discount price -------- ----------- -------------- -------------- BU1032 10 19.99 17.99 BU1111 10 11.95 10.76 BU2075 10 2.99 2.69 BU7832 10 19.99 17.99 PS1372 12 21.59 19.00 PS2091 12 10.95 9.64 PS2106 12 7.00 6.16 PS3333 12 19.99 17.59 PS7777 12 7.99 7.03 MC2222 15 19.99 16.99 MC3021 15 2.99 2.54 MC3026 15 NULL NULL (12 rows affected)
This type of example permits sophisticated pattern matching without having to construct a series of or clauses.