Is it possible to query a comma separated column for a specific value?

I have (and don't own, so I can't change) a table with a layout similar to this.

ID | CATEGORIES
---------------
1  | c1
2  | c2,c3
3  | c3,c2
4  | c3
5  | c4,c8,c5,c100

I need to return the rows that contain a specific category id. I starting by writing the queries with LIKE statements, because the values can be anywhere in the string

SELECT id FROM table WHERE categories LIKE '%c2%'; Would return rows 2 and 3

SELECT id FROM table WHERE categories LIKE '%c3%' and categories LIKE '%c2%'; Would again get me rows 2 and 3, but not row 4

SELECT id FROM table WHERE categories LIKE '%c3%' or categories LIKE '%c2%'; Would again get me rows 2, 3, and 4

I don't like all the LIKE statements. I've found FIND_IN_SET() in the Oracle documentation but it doesn't seem to work in 10g. I get the following error:

ORA-00904: "FIND_IN_SET": invalid identifier
00904. 00000 -  "%s: invalid identifier"

when running this query: SELECT id FROM table WHERE FIND_IN_SET('c2', categories); (example from the docs) or this query: SELECT id FROM table WHERE FIND_IN_SET('c2', categories) <> 0; (example from Google)

I would expect it to return rows 2 and 3.

Is there a better way to write these queries instead of using a ton of LIKE statements?

You can, using LIKE. You don't want to match for partial values, so you'll have to include the commas in your search. That also means that you'll have to provide an extra comma to search for values at the beginning or end of your text:

select 
  * 
from
  YourTable 
where 
  ',' || CommaSeparatedValueColumn || ',' LIKE '%,SearchValue,%'

But this query will be slow, as will all queries using LIKE, especially with a leading wildcard.

And there's always a risk. If there are spaces around the values, or values can contain commas themselves in which case they are surrounded by quotes (like in csv files), this query won't work and you'll have to add even more logic, slowing down your query even more.

A better solution would be to add a child table for these categories. Or rather even a separate table for the catagories, and a table that cross links them to YourTable.

You can write a PIPELINED table function which return a 1 column table. Each row is a value from the comma separated string. Use something like this to pop a string from the list and put it as a row into the table:

PIPE ROW(ltrim(rtrim(substr(l_list, 1, l_idx - 1),' '),' '));

Usage:

SELECT * FROM MyTable 
WHERE 'c2' IN TABLE(Util_Pkg.split_string(categories));

See more here: Oracle docs

Yes and No...

"Yes":

Normalize the data (strongly recommended) - i.e. split the categorie column so that you have each categorie in a separate... then you can just query it in a normal faschion...

"No":
As long as you keep this "pseudo-structure" there will be several issues (performance and others) and you will have to do something similar to:

SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE categories LIKE 'c2,%' OR categories = 'c2' OR categories LIKE '%,c2,%' OR categories LIKE '%,c2'

IF you absolutely must you could define a function which is named FIND_IN_SET like the following:

CREATE OR REPLACE Function FIND_IN_SET
   ( vSET IN varchar2, vToFind IN VARCHAR2 )
   RETURN number
IS
    rRESULT number;
BEGIN

rRESULT := -1;
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO rRESULT FROM DUAL WHERE vSET LIKE ( vToFine || ',%' ) OR vSET = vToFind OR vSET LIKE ('%,' || vToFind || ',%') OR vSET LIKE ('%,' || vToFind);

RETURN rRESULT;

END;

You can then use that function like:

SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE FIND_IN_SET (categories, 'c2' ) > 0;

For the sake of future searchers, don't forget the regular expression way:

with tbl as (
select 1 ID, 'c1' CATEGORIES from dual
union
select 2 ID, 'c2,c3' CATEGORIES from dual
union
select 3 ID, 'c3,c2' CATEGORIES from dual
union
select 4 ID, 'c3' CATEGORIES from dual
union
select 5 ID, 'c4,c8,c5,c100' CATEGORIES from dual
)
select * 
from tbl
where regexp_like(CATEGORIES, '(^|\W)c3(\W|$)');

        ID CATEGORIES
---------- -------------
         2 c2,c3
         3 c3,c2
         4 c3

This matches on a word boundary, so even if the comma was followed by a space it would still work. If you want to be more strict and match only where a comma separates values, replace the '\W' with a comma. At any rate, read the regular expression as: match a group of either the beginning of the line or a word boundary, followed by the target search value, followed by a group of either a word boundary or the end of the line.

As long as the comma-delimited list is 512 characters or less, you can also use a regular expression in this instance (Oracle's regular expression functions, e.g., REGEXP_LIKE(), are limited to 512 characters):

SELECT id, categories
  FROM mytable
 WHERE REGEXP_LIKE('c2', '^(' || REPLACE(categories, ',', '|') || ')$', 'i');

In the above I'm replacing the commas with the regular expression alternation operator |. If your list of delimited values is already |-delimited, so much the better.