By: Tim Smith
Overview
We can use some comparable expressions to a full regular expression library for matching certain patterns with T-SQL using the like operator. In this tutorial, we will practice using these expressions (referred to as regular expressions in the context only of T-SQL) for filtering price phrases involving alphabetic, numeric, and special characters. By the end of this tutorial, we will have another tool that we may use for precisely filtering data for some applicable situations.
I’ve used regex in numerous situations and it can be very useful to know and practice, which we’ll be doing in this tutorial. While regular expressions can sometimes seem counterintuitive, we will experience many situations where this skill can quickly solve problems that multiple ANDs in a WHERE clause may not be as efficient to use.
As for its use, some examples where regular expressions can provide us with assistance and make complex problems easy:
- Applying very specific filters on text, numeric or special character data, especially when precision is paramount, and we cannot allow any possible error at all.
- Parsing data for ETL purposes, finding patterns in code or in word use, or creating rules for inbound or outbound traffic.
- In older versions of SQL Server, some functions to validate numbers may allow some characters, like e, and regular expressions can provide more accurate filters in these situations.
- Muddying or intentionally corrupting data in some environments or in some situations to confuse or mislead infiltrators.
We can apply regex in situations where we need to look at text data, numerical data, or data that uses a combination, such as identifiers with letters, numbers and special characters.
The outline for this tutorial is as follows:
- Using regular expressions with alphabetic characters
- Introduction to alphabetic regular expressions
- Precise alphabetic filtering with regular expressions
- Case sensitivity and regular expressions
- Putting it all together
- Using regular expressions with numeric characters
- Introduction to numeric regular expressions
- Numerical ranges with any combinations or special characters
- Putting it all together
- Using regular expressions with special characters and applications with
it
- Introduction to special character regular expressions
- Using the “not” character with regular expressions
- Wrapping up with business applications using regular expressions examples
- With date examples
- With credit card examples
- With URL examples
- With email examples
- Summary
