Multiple conditions with CASE statements

Question

I need to query some data. here is the query that i have constructed but which isn't workig fine for me. For this example I am using AdventureWorks database.

SELECT * FROM [Purchasing].[Vendor] WHERE PurchasingWebServiceURL LIKE 
case
// In this case I need all rows to be returned if @url is '' or 'ALL' or NULL
 when (@url IS null OR @url = '' OR @url = 'ALL') then ('''%'' AND PurchasingWebServiceURL IS NULL')
//I need all records which are blank here including nulls
         when (@url = 'blank') then (''''' AND PurchasingWebServiceURL IS NULL' )
//n this condition I need all record which are not like a particular value
         when (@url = 'fail') then ('''%'' AND PurchasingWebServiceURL NOT LIKE ''%treyresearch%''' )
//Else Match the records which are `LIKE` the input value
         else '%' + @url + '%' 
    end

This is not working for me. How can I have multiple where condition clauses in the THEN of the the same CASE? How can I make this work?

Answer 1

It's not a cut and paste. The CASE expression must return a value, and you are returning a string containing SQL (which is technically a value but of a wrong type). This is what you wanted to write, I think:

SELECT * FROM [Purchasing].[Vendor] WHERE  
CASE
  WHEN @url IS null OR @url = '' OR @url = 'ALL'
    THEN PurchasingWebServiceURL LIKE '%'
  WHEN @url = 'blank'
    THEN PurchasingWebServiceURL = ''
  WHEN @url = 'fail'
    THEN PurchasingWebServiceURL NOT LIKE '%treyresearch%'
  ELSE PurchasingWebServiceURL = '%' + @url + '%' 
END

I also suspect that this might not work in some dialects, but can't test now (Oracle, I'm looking at you), due to not having booleans.

However, since @url is not dependent on the table values, why not make three different queries, and choose which to evaluate based on your parameter?