Developing modern applications in cloud

I wanted to test a regular expression for post code validation against some real data. I have a list of postcodes from ONS in a database. I had an option to write a small vb program to query the database and then test each value against the regular express and then report pass or fail. But then I thought let see if Oracle provides some support for regular expression in the query. Eureka!!! Here it is to test a column against a regular expression.... SELECT zip FROM zipcode WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(zip, '[^[:digit:]]') The above query will bring all records matching the RE. For more details, visit http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/webcolumns/2003/techarticles/rischert_regexp_pt1.html