I have a table in an oracle database the columns contain search details for other tables. These details are used by a third party product over which I have no control, it searches the same oracle database. I want to be able to generate a SQL query based on these search details from the table. These search details are not SQL :(

I've had some success using SQL::Abstract. I am stuck with some of the criteria. For example a record type may be as follows:

FOO
FOO|BAR|BAZ
FO%|B%|CAT

Here % is a wildcard, similar to oracle and | is logical OR. The first two aren't a problem, I don't understand how to process the third. In addition to that one of the columns contains a key value pair of a column name and it's value:
SHIFT=FOO
SHIFT=FO%|BAR

Using SQL::Abstract I've written a script, for each filed checking to see if each value contains things like |,%,:,< and > characters. So far in testing this works ok up to a point. I can't working out how to deal with examples containing multiple values which have wild cards (FO%|B%|CAT). With a great number of columns (and a column which contains key value pairs) I'm wondering if there's a more genereric way to do this, without having a stack of if,else conditions for each possible combination. If anyone can advise on a more sensible approach I'd be glad to know it.

In reply to SQL::Abstract with non SQL source data by Anonymous Monk

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