CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sqlms-access
tksy
tksy

Reputation: 3529

sql to compare two strings in MS access

I am trying to compare a series of strings like the following

rodeo     rodas
carrot    crate
GLX       GLX 1.1
GLX       glxs

the comparision need not be case sensitive i am trying to write a sql where i am updating the first string with the second string if they match approximately. Here except the second string all the other examples match. I would like to write a query which updates the strings except the second one.

is this possible directly in a query in ACCESS

thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3847

Answers (3)

heferav
heferav

Reputation: 769

What you are trying to do is called fuzzy matching and it is quite complicated to code -- refer http://search.cpan.org/dist/String-Approx/Approx.pm

I tried doing this with a combination of SQL and VBA functions and gave up because there were so many exceptions. The best I could come up with in the end was the following:

(1) Used strawberry perl to connect to the ms-access db using the win32 perl module;

(2) Ran sql queries from perl to obtain the two connection strings;

(3) Used perl's String::Approx module to do the fuzzy string comparison -- this returns 1 for a perfect match and a decreasing number less than 1 for an imperfect match.

(4) Appended the fuzzy match number back into ms-access via a sql query.

Upvotes: 1

arno
arno

Reputation: 357

You cannot measure the distance of two strings directly in Access. You have to implement a suitable metric which calculates the distance--there are many different ways to calculate it.

Edit: You may want to watch this Wikipedia entry which describes the possibilities very good. The Levenshtein Distance Mitch recommends is a very good and simple solution for solving this.

Upvotes: 1

Mitch Wheat
Mitch Wheat

Reputation: 300529

Other than using LIKE, this is not possible directly in a query in MS Access. You will need to implement some sort of Levenshtein Distance function for approximate matches.

Upvotes: 2

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