[sql] Regular expressions inside SQL Server

I have stored values in my database that look like 5XXXXXX, where X can be any digit. In other words, I need to match incoming SQL query strings like 5349878.

Does anyone have an idea how to do it?

I have different cases like XXXX7XX for example, so it has to be generic. I don't care about representing the pattern in a different way inside the SQL Server.

I'm working with c# in .NET.

In order to match a digit, you can use [0-9].

So you could use 5[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] and [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]7[0-9][0-9][0-9]. I do this a lot for zip codes.

SQL Wildcards are enough for this purpose. Follow this link: http://www.w3schools.com/SQL/sql_wildcards.asp

you need to use a query like this:

select * from mytable where msisdn like '%7%'

or

select * from mytable where msisdn like '56655%'

You can write queries like this in SQL Server:

--each [0-9] matches a single digit, this would match 5xx
SELECT * FROM YourTable WHERE SomeField LIKE '5[0-9][0-9]'

Try this

select * from mytable
where p1 not like '%[^0-9]%' and substring(p1,1,1)='5'

Of course, you'll need to adjust the substring value, but the rest should work...