Find column that contains a given value in MySQL

Question

I have a table in a MySQL database. I am given a value that occurs as a cell value in that table but I do not know which cell is it i.e. the row and column of that cell. What is

Answer 1

Without knowing more about your app, you have several options:

• Use MySQL's built-in full-text search. You can check the MATCH function in the MySQL documentation.
• Depending on the needs of your app you could decide to index your whole table with an external full-text search index, like Solr or Sphynx. This provides instant response time, but you'll need to keep the index updated.
• You can loop through all the columns in the table doing a LIKE query in MySQL (very expensive in CPU and time)

Answer 2

You're designing this table with repeating groups, which is not satisfying First Normal Form.

You should create a second table and store the values for column1, column2, and column2 in a single column, on three rows.

Learn about the rules of database normalization for more details.

Answer 3

It's a bit strange that you don't know which column the data is in, since columns are meant to have a well-defined function.

[Original response scrubbed.]

EDIT: Your updated post just asks for the column. In that case, you don't need the view, and can just run this query

SELECT col FROM (
   SELECT "Column_1" AS col, Column_1 AS value FROM YourTable
   UNION ALL SELECT "Column_2", Column_2 FROM YourTable
   UNION ALL SELECT "Column_3", Column_3 FROM YourTable
) allValues
WHERE value=8;

When you run this query against your table, it will return "Column_2"