how to tell in which column the search string was found?

Question

is it possible to tell in which column the search string was found, without having to do it with ifs?

if <searchstring> in column1
    -- do some stuff here
else if <searchstring> in column2
    ...
...

i won't post the exact query, as it is too cryptical and too long, but here's a query which does basically the same

select
    title,
    description
from
    position
where
    CONTAINS( (title, description), '"manager"' )

Answer 1

You can take help of INFORMATION_SCHEMA.view_name. in this case, like in BOL

SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE IS_NULLABLE = 'NO' ORDER BY DATA_TYPE;