What is contained in the column containing the word(s) of interest? If you use the “=” (equals) operator, the column must contain exactly one word, with no leading/trailing other text, spaces, etc.

i.e. if you are searching for the word “Arrays” in the table, then the column being searched must contain just that word “Arrays”. If it contains something like “Arrays are fun”, then your search will fail.

If the column of data contains longer text, you can find “substrings” matching your query word, but you must beware of false positives. To search for a substring, use:
select … from mytable where mycolumn LIKE ‘%’ + word + ‘%’.

Unfortunately, if you are looking for the “word” “ARE”, this will find the following (and many others):
“are”
“many records are found”
“how many are there?”
“bewARE of these substrings” – oops

Handling this in T-SQL is quite a pain, but luckily there is a better solution.

I would suggest Googling “SQL Server full text search”. SQL Server has a built-in ability to generate full text search data and then you can search it using the CONTAINS predicate. Full text searching is how most systems provide the ability to find individual “words” inside longer text strings, and there are a lot more useful features available as well.

First question should be about what DBMS holds the database? Then, what is the definition of the column being searched, e.g., is it CHAR, VARCHAR or perhaps something more complex such as a CLOB? Does the column contain individual words or is it phrases? And is the search case-sensitive?

Tom

I don’t think the phyton code suggested by Mrdenny is going to work.

I’m not a phython expert, but I suppose this expression:

for word in searchword

is creating a loop with as much iterations as elements in the array, so every time the query is executed it will look for a single word, making the IN clause and the parenthesis unnecessary.

IMO, the key to solve the problem would be in the answer to the questions posted by Tom, and the observations made by Kccrosser.

Can anybody help me with the coding
 Dim tbStudent As DataTable
        Dim dcPrimaryKey(0) As DataColumn
        tbStudent = sqlDataset.Tables(“Major”)
        dcPrimaryKey(0) = tbStudent.Columns(“MajorName”)
        tbStudent.PrimaryKey = dcPrimaryKey
     

        Dim major As String = TextBox1.Text
        Dim depa As String = TextBox2.Text
        Dim sname As String = TextBox3.Text

        Dim frmFind As New Form4
        Dim strStudentNo As String
        frmFind.ShowDialog()

        strStudentNo = frmFind.majorname
        If Not major Is Nothing Then
            Dim drSubject As DataRow = tbStudent.Rows.Find(major)
            If Not major Is Nothing Then
                TextBox1.Text = drSubject.Item(“MajorName”)
                TextBox2.Text = drSubject.Item(“Departement”)

                TextBox3.Text = drSubject.Item(“Suject_Name”)
            Else
                MessageBox.Show(“Student not found.”, Me.Text, MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)
            End If
        End If

    End Sub

    Private Sub ShowREC()
        Dim sqlDataset As New DataSet

        Dim SQLdr As DataRow
        If n >= 0 Then
            ‘  SQLdr = sqlDataset.Tables(“Major”).Rows(n)
            SQLdr = sqlDataset.Tables(“Major”).Rows(n)

            TextBox1.Text = SQLdr.Item(“MajorName”)
            TextBox2.Text = SQLdr.Item(“Departement”)

            TextBox3.Text = SQLdr.Item(“Suject_Name”)
            ‘dtpDOB.Value = dr1.Item(“DOB”)
            ‘cmbMajorI.Text = dr1.Item(“MajorI”)
            ‘cmbMajorII.Text = dr1.Item(“MajorII”)

        End If

Can anybody help me with the coding
 
Can you explain how this relates to this thread? Anhd can you tell us what problem you have?
 
Tom