SQL for extract portion of a string

Question

I have a zipcode stored in a text field (string) and would like to select only the last 3 digits of the value in my select statement. is this possible? Is there a standard way of doing this so that the SQL is interchangeable accross databases? I will be using it in production on Oracle, but i test on Interbase (yes, yes, i know, two totally diff DBs, but thats what i am doing)

thanks for any help you can offer

Answer 1

Assuming the zipcodes all have the same length, you can use substr.
If they don't have the same length, you have to do similar things with the strlen function.

Interbase does not have a built-in substring function, but it does have a UDF (user defined function) called SUBSTR in lib_udf.dll that works like this:

select substr(clients.lastname, 1, 10)
from clients

You declare the UDF like this:

DECLARE EXTERNAL FUNCTION SUBSTR
    CSTRING(80),
    SMALLINT,
    SMALLINT
RETURNS CSTRING(80) FREE_IT
ENTRY_POINT 'IB_UDF_substr' MODULE_NAME 'ib_udf';

Oracle does have a built-in substr function that you use like this:

select substr(clients.lastname, 1, 10)
from clients

--jeroen

Answer 2

This depends on how your storing the zip code. If you are using 5 digits only then this should work for Oracle and may work for Interbase.

select * from table where substr(zip,3,3) = '014'

IF you store Zip + 4 and you want the last 3 digits and some are 5 digits and some are 9 digits you would have to do the following.

select * from table where substr(zip,length(zip) -2,3) = '014'

and one option that may work better in both databases is

select * from table where zip like '%014'