I have the following query : SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FullName LIKE '%James Martin%' and : SELECT * FROM Employe WHERE FullName = 'James Martin' I want to know the difference between LIKE and =

LIKE is the ANSI/ISO standard operator for comparing a column value to another column value, or to a quoted string. It returns either 1 or 0. The equals to (=) operator is a comparison oparator and used for equality test within two numbers or expressions. LIKE is generally used only with strings however equals (=) is used for exact matching and it seems faster. LIKE supports the wildcards (%). Equals to (=) doesn't.

Equal finds exact matches. With LIKE and the % you will find any records where FullName contains "James Martin", like "James Martin Jr." or "Dr. James Martin".