March 18, 2023 By Beekeeper Studio Staff

The function SOUNDEX(character_expression) converts a string into a four-character code to help find similar-sounding words and names. character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column name. It is useful for finding strings for which the sound is known but the precise spelling is not. It makes assumptions about the way that letters and combinations of letters sound that can help to search out words with similar sounds.

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The following example returns two rows containing the values ‘MacFeather’ and ‘McBadden’ in the au_lname column of the authors table. You can run this SQL statement from the SQL window in Teratrax Database Manager to get all rows where au_lname sounds like ‘mcfeather’.

USE pubs

SELECT *
FROM authors
WHERE SOUNDEX(au_lname) = SOUNDEX('mcfeather')

If you don’t have the pubs database on your server, you can experiment with some of the tables in other databases. Substitute all lowercase words with your own words.

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