ArcGIS Select Query help

AnuSawant

Hi there,

In one of my field I have got records showing attribute 

1) A1,F4,A10

2) A1,A17

3) F1,G6, A1

4) A10, A1

6) D1, A17

7) D2, D4

and so on I am trying to select records showing A1 valueI have tried using query  Field1 LIKE '%A1%' it is also selecting A10. Is there any way I can select only value A1?

Thanks,

Anu

bixb0012

As Vince already pointed out, your data design doesn't fit well within the relational model, which makes storing and querying it in a relational data store kludgy.  That said, it is not uncommon to see this kind of data design, and most relational data stores and the SQL standard itself have made some accommodations.

Trying to use SQL LIKE to accomplish your matching will result in a long list of LIKE and OR statements.  Depending on your backend data store, you can use expanded pattern matching through LIKE or SIMILAR.  The not-so-good news is that expanded pattern matching is very implementation/product specific, so portability suffers.

If you are working with file geodatabases, see if the following works:

<SPAN class="comment token">-- SIMILAR TO syntax here only works correctly in </SPAN>
<SPAN class="comment token">-- ArcGIS Desktop 10.6 or greater and ArcGIS Pro 2.0 or greater</SPAN>
field_name SIMILAR <SPAN class="keyword token">TO</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'(A1[ ,]%|%[ ,]A1[ ,]%|%[ ,]A1)'</SPAN>‍‍‍‍&nbsp; <SPAN class="line-numbers-rows"><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN></SPAN>

Looking closely at your data, the matching is made more difficult by inconsistent use of spaces.  For some records, there is a space after a comma but not all the time.  My SQL above assumes there may or may not be a single space or comma before or after the value you are searching.

UPDATE:

The comparable SQL to my above using basic pattern matching with LIKE is:

field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'A1,%'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'A1 %'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'% A1 %'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'% A1,%'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'%,A1 %'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'%,A1,%'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'% A1'</SPAN> <SPAN class="operator token">OR</SPAN>
field_name <SPAN class="operator token">LIKE</SPAN> <SPAN class="string token">'%,A1'</SPAN>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍<SPAN class="line-numbers-rows"><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN><SPAN>‍</SPAN></SPAN>

The SQL code using LIKE is very portable, but as you can see, you shouldn't expect much for performance when you chaining together so many condition checks using OR.