possible to create sql query with table wildcards?

Question

This is probably a simple question, but i have been unable to find a solution online, any help would be much appreciated.

I'm trying to create an SQL query in PHP and would like to somehow apply a wild card to the TABLE filter... something perhaps like.... select * from %_table_%. However, I have only so far been able to see filters for column values not table names.

as an example i would have tables such as:

jan_table_1
feb_table_1
jan_table_2
feb_table_2

and would want to say, select only tables with a "jan" prefix... or "1" suffix.

Is there a quick and easy solution to this that I have not seen? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In Sql server you can query for the table names you want like this

select * from sys.tables where name like '%table%'

In your code you could loop through the table names and execute your query on each table and merge the results. Most other RDBMS have similar functionality.

Answer 2

There isn't. But the tables shouldn't be separated by month. Instead appropriate indexes should be used to speed up access.