Mark,
In addition to Perry's suggestion, you could also use CHARINDEX() which is the T-SQL equivalent of AT():

SELECT * FROM customer WHERE CHARINDEX('AL', customer.lastname) > 0

HTH
>Is there an equivalent of Fox's $ operator in SQL's query syntax? For example, in Fox I can ...
>
>SELECT * FROM customer WHERE "AL" $ customer.lastname
>
>... how I do the same in SQL Server?
>
>Thanks.