This example uses the % and _ characters to select a list of employees with the letter A as the second letter in the last name. The length of the return string may be two or more characters.
SELECT Name FROM Employee WHERE Name LIKE '_a%';
returns the result:
Name ---------- Marston A Watson L Carter J
Replacing _a% with _a_ changes the search to a three-character string with the letter a as the second character. Because none of the names in the Employee table fit this description, the query returns no rows.
Both leading and trailing pad characters in a pattern are significant to the matching rules.