SEO

I am facing a very interesting challenge:

We have a program which needs to find a person that has a certain
phone number on our database which has quite a lot of records.

The problem is that the phone numbers we have in database (Informix
IDS 9.40) are saved as CHAR(20) and are in different formats - whith
lots of characters like () , - / or even x letters for extensions.

Part of the problem is that a lot of the records were imported from
another database which had a lot of different formats.

Anyway, the numbers we want to search for are in 10 digit phone
numbers. How can I parse the phone numbers we got in database
(CHAR(20)) so we can match them to our 10 digit numbers? Something
like this

select * from persons where SomeKindOfFunction(phone) = 2486773456

and it would be true if we got something like 248-677-3456 or
(248)677-3456 x 431 in database. So SomeKindofFunction() would return
only the first ten numeric part of the phone field in database?

Any idea would be greatly appreciated !!!!

Genti

Gentian Hila wrote:
> I am facing a very interesting challenge:
>
> We have a program which needs to find a person that has a certain
> phone number on our database which has quite a lot of records.
>
> The problem is that the phone numbers we have in database (Informix
> IDS 9.40) are saved as CHAR(20) and are in different formats - whith
> lots of characters like () , - / or even x letters for extensions.
>
> Part of the problem is that a lot of the records were imported from
> another database which had a lot of different formats.
>
> Anyway, the numbers we want to search for are in 10 digit phone
> numbers. How can I parse the phone numbers we got in database
> (CHAR(20)) so we can match them to our 10 digit numbers? Something
> like this
>
> select * from persons where SomeKindOfFunction(phone) = 2486773456
>
> and it would be true if we got something like 248-677-3456 or
> (248)677-3456 x 431 in database. So SomeKindofFunction() would return
> only the first ten numeric part of the phone field in database?
>
> Any idea would be greatly appreciated !!!!
>
> Genti

if you are happy with regular expressions then I'd just install the
regexp blade

Cheer
Paul

Gentian Hila wrote:
> I am facing a very interesting challenge:
>
> We have a program which needs to find a person that has a certain
> phone number on our database which has quite a lot of records.
>
> The problem is that the phone numbers we have in database (Informix
> IDS 9.40) are saved as CHAR(20) and are in different formats - whith
> lots of characters like () , - / or even x letters for extensions.
>
> Part of the problem is that a lot of the records were imported from
> another database which had a lot of different formats.
>
> Anyway, the numbers we want to search for are in 10 digit phone
> numbers. How can I parse the phone numbers we got in database
> (CHAR(20)) so we can match them to our 10 digit numbers? Something
> like this
>
> select * from persons where SomeKindOfFunction(phone) = 2486773456
>
> and it would be true if we got something like 248-677-3456 or
> (248)677-3456 x 431 in database. So SomeKindofFunction() would return
> only the first ten numeric part of the phone field in database?
>
> Any idea would be greatly appreciated !!!!
>
> Genti

if you are happy with regular expressions then I'd just install the
regexp blade

Cheer
Paul

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Thanks for your replies.

Is there a regexp for Redhat ES 3.0? I was able to locate only for SUN.

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Paul Watson (Oninit LLC)
<paul@oninit.com> wrote:
>
> Gentian Hila wrote:
> > I am facing a very interesting challenge:
> >
> > We have a program which needs to find a person that has a certain
> > phone number on our database which has quite a lot of records.
> >
> > The problem is that the phone numbers we have in database (Informix
> > IDS 9.40) are saved as CHAR(20) and are in different formats - whith
> > lots of characters like () , - / or even x letters for extensions.
> >
> > Part of the problem is that a lot of the records were imported from
> > another database which had a lot of different formats.
> >
> > Anyway, the numbers we want to search for are in 10 digit phone
> > numbers. How can I parse the phone numbers we got in database
> > (CHAR(20)) so we can match them to our 10 digit numbers? Something
> > like this
> >
> > select * from persons where SomeKindOfFunction(phone) = 2486773456
> >
> > and it would be true if we got something like 248-677-3456 or
> > (248)677-3456 x 431 in database. So SomeKindofFunction() would return
> > only the first ten numeric part of the phone field in database?
> >
> > Any idea would be greatly appreciated !!!!
> >
> > Genti
>
> if you are happy with regular expressions then I'd just install the
> regexp blade
>
> Cheer
> Paul
>
> ================================================== =========================================
> Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer:
>
> http://www.oninit.com/home/disclaimer.php
>
> ================================================== =========================================
>
>

AFAIK the source code is there, you should be able to run make and it
should just work.

Cheers
Paul

Gentian Hila wrote:
> Thanks for your replies.
>
> Is there a regexp for Redhat ES 3.0? I was able to locate only for SUN.
>
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Paul Watson (Oninit LLC)
> <paul@oninit.com> wrote:
>> Gentian Hila wrote:
>>> I am facing a very interesting challenge:
>>>
>>> We have a program which needs to find a person that has a certain
>>> phone number on our database which has quite a lot of records.
>>>
>>> The problem is that the phone numbers we have in database (Informix
>>> IDS 9.40) are saved as CHAR(20) and are in different formats - whith
>>> lots of characters like () , - / or even x letters for extensions.
>>>
>>> Part of the problem is that a lot of the records were imported from
>>> another database which had a lot of different formats.
>>>
>>> Anyway, the numbers we want to search for are in 10 digit phone
>>> numbers. How can I parse the phone numbers we got in database
>>> (CHAR(20)) so we can match them to our 10 digit numbers? Something
>>> like this
>>>
>>> select * from persons where SomeKindOfFunction(phone) = 2486773456
>>>
>>> and it would be true if we got something like 248-677-3456 or
>>> (248)677-3456 x 431 in database. So SomeKindofFunction() would return
>>> only the first ten numeric part of the phone field in database?
>>>
>>> Any idea would be greatly appreciated !!!!
>>>
>>> Genti
>> if you are happy with regular expressions then I'd just install the
>> regexp blade
>>
>> Cheer
>> Paul
>>
>> ================================================== =========================================
>> Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer:
>>
>> http://www.oninit.com/home/disclaimer.php
>>
>> ================================================== =========================================
>>
>>

AFAIK the source code is there, you should be able to run make and it
should just work.

Cheers
Paul

Gentian Hila wrote:
> Thanks for your replies.
>
> Is there a regexp for Redhat ES 3.0? I was able to locate only for SUN.
>
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Paul Watson (Oninit LLC)
> <paul@oninit.com> wrote:
>> Gentian Hila wrote:
>>> I am facing a very interesting challenge:
>>>
>>> We have a program which needs to find a person that has a certain
>>> phone number on our database which has quite a lot of records.
>>>
>>> The problem is that the phone numbers we have in database (Informix
>>> IDS 9.40) are saved as CHAR(20) and are in different formats - whith
>>> lots of characters like () , - / or even x letters for extensions.
>>>
>>> Part of the problem is that a lot of the records were imported from
>>> another database which had a lot of different formats.
>>>
>>> Anyway, the numbers we want to search for are in 10 digit phone
>>> numbers. How can I parse the phone numbers we got in database
>>> (CHAR(20)) so we can match them to our 10 digit numbers? Something
>>> like this
>>>
>>> select * from persons where SomeKindOfFunction(phone) = 2486773456
>>>
>>> and it would be true if we got something like 248-677-3456 or
>>> (248)677-3456 x 431 in database. So SomeKindofFunction() would return
>>> only the first ten numeric part of the phone field in database?
>>>
>>> Any idea would be greatly appreciated !!!!
>>>
>>> Genti
>> if you are happy with regular expressions then I'd just install the
>> regexp blade
>>
>> Cheer
>> Paul
>>
>> ================================================== =========================================
>> Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer:
>>
>> http://www.oninit.com/home/disclaimer.php
>>
>> ================================================== =========================================
>>
>>


================================================== =========================================
Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer:

http://www.oninit.com/home/disclaimer.php

================================================== =========================================