Fuzzy match column to column

Question

I'm trying to find a way to match a column of clean data in table 1 to a column of dirty data in table2 without making any changes to the dirty data. I was thinking a fuzzy match, but there are too many entries in the clean table to allow for CDEs to be used. So, for example:

Table 1
GroupID    CompanyName
123        CompanyA
445        CompanyB
556        CompanyC

Table 2
GroupID    Patientname
AE123789   PatientA
123987     PatientB
445111     PatientC

And I'm trying to match the insurance company to the patient using the group number. Is there a matching method out there? (Fortunately the group numbers are actually much longer and when looking for a single group's worth of patients, fuzzy matching works really well, so they seem to be unique enough to be applied here).

Working in SQL server 2008.

Answer 1

This changes slightly depending on which database you are using, but it looks like you're looking for something like this:

MSSQL

select *
from table1 t1
  join table2 t2 on t2.groupid like '%'+cast(t1.groupid as varchar(max))+'%' 

• SQL Fiddle Demo

MySQL - use Concat():

select *
from table1 t1
  join table2 t2 on t2.groupid like concat('%',t1.groupid,'%')