I learnt coolest SQL hack related to string wildcards this week .

In SQL, we often need to search character fields using Percentage(%) wildcard. When we put the wildcard at the end of the search string (String%) it uses the index, but if we put it at the front (%String) it does a scan of the index. This significantly increases your time!

Example:
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE column1 LIKE ‘Some_string%’

vs

SELECT * FROM table
WHERE column1 LIKE ‘%Some_string’

We say that option 1 is Sargable (Search ARGument ABLE), and option 2 is not sargable, meaning option 2 could not leverage the index on column.

To ensure all your wildcard queries are sargable and to significantly decrease your run time, do the following:
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE REVERSE(column1) LIKE REVERSE(‘Some_string’)+’%’

And boom, your query runs much, much faster!
Try it on your own and experience the difference!!