SQL like vs performance

Question

This question  skirts around what I m wondering  but the answers don t exactly address it    It would seem that in general     is faster than  like  when using wildcards  This appears to be the conventional wisdom  However  lets suppose I have a column containing a limited number of different fixed  hardcoded  varchar identifiers  and I want to select all rows matching one of them   select   from table where value like  abc     and   select   from table where value    abcdefghijklmn     Like  should only need to test the first three chars to find a match  whereas     must compare the entire string  In this case it would seem to me that  like  would have an advantage  all other things being equal   This is intended as a general  academic question  and so should not matter which DB  but it arose using SQL Server 2005

User · Answer

First things first     they are not always equal       select  Hello  from dual where  Hello    like  Hello        select  Hello  from dual where  Hello        Hello     when things are not always equal   talking about their performance isn t that relevant    If you are working on strings and only char variables   then you can talk about performance   But don t use like and     as being generally interchangeable     As you would have seen in many posts   above and other questions    in cases when they are equal the performance of like is slower owing to pattern matching  collation

User · Answer

It s a measureable difference   Run the following   Create Table  TempTester  id int  col1 varchar 20   value varchar 20   go  INSERT INTO  TempTester  id  col1  value  VALUES  1   this is  1    abcdefghij   GO  INSERT INTO  TempTester  id  col1  value  VALUES  2   this is  2    foob     3   this is  3    abdefghic     4   this is  4    other     5   this is  5    zyx     6   this is  6    zyx     7   this is  7    zyx     8   this is  8    klm     9   this is  9    klm     10   this is  10    zyx   GO 10000  CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ixId ON  TempTester id CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ixId ON  TempTester id   CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX ixTesting ON  TempTester value    Then   SET SHOWPLAN XML ON  Then   SELECT   FROM  TempTester WHERE value LIKE  abc    SELECT   FROM  TempTester WHERE value    abcdefghij    The resulting execution plan shows you that the cost of the first operation  the LIKE comparison  is about 10 times more expensive than the   comparison   If you can use an   comparison  please do so

User · Answer

A personal example using mysql 5 5  I had an inner join between 2 tables  one of 3 million rows and one of 10 thousand rows   When using a like on an index as below no wildcards   it took about 30 seconds     where login like  12345678    using  explain  I get     When using an     on the same query  it took about 0 1 seconds   where login   600009    Using  explain  I get     As you can see  the like completely cancelled the index seek  so query took 300 times more time

User · Answer

You should also keep in mind that when using like  some sql flavors will ignore indexes  and that will kill performance  This is especially true if you don t use the  starts with  pattern like your example   You should really look at the execution plan for the query and see what it s doing  guess as little as possible   This being said  the  starts with  pattern can and is optimized in sql server  It will use the table index  EF 4 0 switched to like for StartsWith for this very reason

User · Answer

If value is unindexed  both result in a table-scan   The performance difference in this scenario will be negligible   If value is indexed  as Daniel points out in his comment  the   will result in an index lookup which is O log N  performance   The LIKE will  most likely - depending on how selective it is  result in a partial scan of the index  gt    abc  and  lt   abd  which will require more effort than the     Note that I m talking SQL Server here - not all DBMSs will be nice with LIKE

User · Answer

You are asking the wrong question  In databases is not the operator performance that matters  is always the SARGability of the expression  and the coverability of the overall query  Performance of the operator itself is largely irrelevant   So  how do LIKE and   compare in terms of SARGability  LIKE  when used with an expression that does not start with a constant  eg  when used LIKE   something   is by definition non-SARGabale  But does that make   or LIKE  something   SARGable  No  As with any question about SQL performance the answer does not lie with the query of the text  but with the schema deployed  These expression may be SARGable if an index exists to satisfy them    So  truth be told  there are small differences between   and LIKE  But asking whether one operator or other operator is  faster  in SQL is like asking  What goes faster  a red car or a blue car    You should eb asking questions about the engine size and vechicle weight  not about the color    To approach questions about optimizing relational tables   the place to look is your indexes and your expressions in the WHERE clause  and other clauses  but it usually starts with the WHERE

User · Answer

Maybe you are looking about Full Text Search      In contrast to full-text search  the LIKE Transact-SQL predicate works on    character patterns only  Also  you cannot use the LIKE predicate to   query formatted binary data  Furthermore  a LIKE query against a large   amount of unstructured text data is much slower than an equivalent   full-text query against the same data  A LIKE query against millions   of rows of text data can take minutes to return  whereas a full-text   query can take only seconds or less against the same data  depending   on the number of rows that are returned

User · Answer

See https   web archive org web 20150209022016 http   myitforum com cs2 blogs jnelson archive 2007 11 16 108354 aspx  Quote from there      the rules for index usage with LIKE   are loosely like this          If your filter criteria uses equals     and the field is indexed  then most   likely it will use an INDEX CLUSTERED   INDEX SEEK     If your filter criteria uses LIKE    with no wildcards  like if you had a   parameter in a web report that COULD   have a   but you instead use the full   string   it is about as likely as  1   to use the index   The increased cost   is almost nothing    If your filter criteria uses LIKE  but   with a wildcard at the beginning  as   in Name0 LIKE   UTER   it s much less   likely to use the index  but it still   may at least perform an INDEX SCAN on   a full or partial range of the index    HOWEVER  if your filter criteria uses   LIKE  but starts with a STRING FIRST   and has wildcards somewhere AFTER that    as in Name0 LIKE  COMP ER    then SQL   may just use an INDEX SEEK to quickly   find rows that have the same first   starting characters  and then look   through those rows for an exact match           Also keep in mind  the SQL engine   still might not use an index the way   you re expecting  depending on what   else is going on in your query and   what tables you re joining to   The   SQL engine reserves the right to   rewrite your query a little to get the   data in a way that it thinks is most   efficient and that may include an   INDEX SCAN instead of an INDEX SEEK

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