SQL query that searches comma-delimited field - mysql

Question

I have a student table which looks something like this:
id | name | school_descriptors
-------------------------------------------------------
1 | Rob | Comp Sci,Undergraduate,2020
2 | Tim | Business,MBA,2022
3 | Matt | Business,MBA,2022
4 | Jack | Law,Masters,2024
5 | Steph | Comp Sci,Masters,2022
The school_descriptors field is just one column, and stores information about the Course, Qualification and Graduation year as a comma-delimited string. (it's terribly designed and I wish it could be split up into its own fields, but it can't right now (I am not the database owner))
I want to provide an interface where teachers can quickly find students that match certain Course, Qualifications and Graduation years, and thus would like to create relevant queries.
Question 1: For example, I would like a teacher to be able to select from the UI: "Business", "MBA" and get returned students with ID 2 and 3. Specifically, an example question I have is: Find students who are in the Business Course and doing the MBA qualification:
SELECT * FROM student_table WHERE school_descriptors LIKE '%Business%' AND school_descriptors LIKE '%MBA%'
The query I have in mind is a basic LIKE query, but I can't help but think there is a more efficient query that can take advantage of the fact that the school_descriptor string is 1) always in a specific order (e.g. course, qualification, graduation), and 2) comma-delimited, and thus could be perhaps split. The table currently sits at ~5000 rows so relatively small but is expected to grow.
Related question 2: Find students who are in the Comp Sci Course and graduating after 2019:
Would it be possible to split the school_descriptors field and add a >2019 operand?
Many thanks!

Answer 1

In MySql you can use the function SUBSTRING_INDEX() to split the column school_descriptors.
This will work only if the positions of Course, Qualification and Graduation year are fixed.
select *,
substring_index(school_descriptors, ',', 1) Course,
substring_index(substring_index(school_descriptors, ',', 2), ',', -1) Qualification,
substring_index(school_descriptors, ',', -1) Graduation
from student_table
See the demo.
Results:
> id | name | school_descriptors | Course | Qualification | Graduation
> -: | :---- | :-------------------------- | :------- | :------------ | :---------
> 1 | Rob | Comp Sci,Undergraduate,2020 | Comp Sci | Undergraduate | 2020
> 2 | Tim | Business,MBA,2022 | Business | MBA | 2022
> 3 | Matt | Business,MBA,2022 | Business | MBA | 2022
> 4 | Jack | Law,Masters,2024 | Law | Masters | 2024
> 5 | Steph | Comp Sci,Masters,2022 | Comp Sci | Masters | 2022

Answer 2

select id, name,
substring_index(school_descriptors,',',1) as course,
substring_index(substring(school_descriptors,length(substring_index(school_descriptors,',',1))+2,200),',',1) as Qualifications,
substring_index(school_descriptors,',',-1) as year
from student;
output:
+------+-------+----------+----------------+------+
| id | name | course | Qualifications | year |
+------+-------+----------+----------------+------+
| 1 | Rob | Comp Sci | Undergraduate | 2020 |
| 2 | Tim | Business | MBA | 2022 |
| 3 | Matt | Business | MBA | 2022 |
| 4 | Jack | Law | Masters | 2024 |
| 5 | Steph | Comp Sci | Masters | 2022 |
+------+-------+----------+----------------+------+
A link to the docs, in case you want to know about SUBSTRING_INDEX()

Answer 3

Answer 1:
SELECT * FROM student_table WHERE school_descriptors REGEXP ['Business','MBA']
By using this query you can get all the records that are having Business OR MBA.
If you want to select only Business, MBA you can try like this
SELECT * FROM student_table WHERE school_descriptors LIKE '%Business,MBA%'
Answer 2:
SELECT *
FROM student
WHERE
SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(school_descriptors , ',', 1), ',', -1)='Comp Sci'
AND
SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(school_descriptors , ',', 3), ',', -1)> 2019;