using LEN to find a first word greater than 17

[ciojr]

how do i write a sql (ORACLE) statement for where the first word in
the name field is greater than 17 chars?
if i do this

SELECT businessname
FROM tablename
WHERE LEN(businessname) 17;

it will return all records when the combined length of words is
greater than 17.
i only want to check if the first word is greater than 17

[Plamen Ratchev]

This is SQL Server newsgroup, so here is how you can do it in SQL Server.
For Oracle you have to check the Oracle newsgroups.

CREATE TABLE Foo (
keycol INT PRIMARY KEY,
businessname VARCHAR(50));

INSERT INTO Foo VALUES(1, 'Tools');
INSERT INTO Foo VALUES(2, 'Someverylongbusinessname Inc.');
INSERT INTO Foo VALUES(3, 'Short Inc.');
INSERT INTO Foo VALUES(4, 'Anotherverylongbusinessname');

SELECT businessname
FROM Foo
WHERE CHARINDEX(' ', businessname + ' ') 18;

HTH,

Plamen Ratchev
http://www.SQLStudio.com