Re: How to merge several attributes and Delete an

Annie,

> Well, I am not familiar with functions, Do they have better
> performance than the plain query as the following?
>
> select * from table where Firstname like 'blah' or middlename like
> 'blah'....

The problem with the approach above is that it allows you to find
"Annie" or "Bai" but not "Annie Bai". The concatination approach,
while slower to execute, allows you to search on any combination. You
will also want to investigate PostgreSQL Regex comparisons so that you
can do case-insensitive similarity matching.

Overall, though, you need to build your basic database design knowledge
before going further on this project. I'd recommend "Database Design
For Mere Mortals.", followed by any number of introdcutory texts on
Postgresql. See
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/bookreviews.php

Finally, your questions are more appropriate to the NOVICE list; would
you be kind enough to post them there, instead? The SQL list is more
for advanced SQL questions (and I answer questions on both lists!).

-Josh Berkus

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