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Robyn Page's SQL Server String Manipulation Workbench
19 September 2006
/*
---------------------------------------------------------------------
This "workbench" on string handling and manipulation in SQL Server is
a companion to my previous one on dates and times. Rather than rehash
what is readily available on SQL Server Books on Line, I've once
again tried to provide a a starting point for your own experiments.
It is structured so it can be pasted in its entirety into the Query
Analyser, SSMS or other GUI and the individual examples executed (and
it is available, zipped up, as an attachment to the article).
The main difficulty in dealing with Strings in SQL Server is that the
techniques are rather open-ended. There are often a number of
different ways to achieve the same end result. The String functions
such as STUFF or REVERSE are of little use by themselves, but when
used in conjunction with others, they become extremely useful. Other
functions are there as 'legacy items' meaning that it is difficult
to remove functions such as SOUNDEX as there are still a few die-
hards still using them
As with the previous 'workbench', my advice is to download the .sql
file (see the Code Download link to the right of the article title)
open it up in SQL Server, and start experimenting!
Ideally, you'll also have Books online open in a browser, to provide
supplementary and background information.
I've added a few questions at the end just so you can check on your
progress. Overall, I hope that this workbench illustrates how easy
string handling is in SQL Server once the basic ideas are grasped.
Contents
--------
Selecting from a table
The String Datatypes
Strings and Collations
Assignment and truncation
The String Functions
LEN
ASCII and UNICODE
NChar
CHAR
PATINDEX
CHARINDEX
REPLACE
STUFF
REPLICATE
SPACE
REVERSE
removing leading or trailing spaces RTRIM & LTRIM
Changing Case UPPER and LOWER
Fuzzy searches, SOUNDEX and DIFFERENCE
Manipulating TEXT and NTEXT
Some Questions
---------------------------------------------------------------------
As a practice table for this workbench we will create a temporary
table and stock it with string data.
*/
CREATE TABLE #Poem (line VARCHAR(255), theOrder INT IDENTITY(1,1))
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I will pen me my memoirs.'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'Ah, youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I wasn''t much of a hand for the boudoirs,'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I was generally to be found where the food was.'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'Does anybody want any flotsam?'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I''ve gotsam.'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'Does anybody want any jetsam?'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I can getsam.'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I can play ''Chopsticks'' on the Wurlitzer,'
INSERT INTO #poem(line)
SELECT 'I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.'
/*from Odgen Nash's wonderful poem 'No Doctors Today, Thank-you'
Note the way that one inserts the ' delimiter (as in "I can play
'Chopsticks' on the Wurlitzer") by putting in a second ' character
SQL Server inherits from its Sybase ancestry a limit to the size of
string. This complicates the manipulation of large quantities of
text. However, this limit has been remedied in SQL Server 2005 with
the special datatype, Varchar(MAX). TEXT is now deprecated as a
datatype but is used sufficiently in versions previous to SQL Server
2005 to make it relevant.
Selecting from a table
----------------------
*/
--you can, of course, select according to strings, or partial strings
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE line LIKE 'I Was%'--'I Was' at
--the start of the line ('%' means 'any number 0-n of any character)
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE line LIKE '%sam%'--'sam' anywhere
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE line LIKE '%?%'--? anywhere
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE line BETWEEN 'a' AND 'e'--returns
--all lines starting with a,b,c or d
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE line < 'D' --returns one line
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE ' '+line LIKE '% g_tsam%'
--here we want only words starting with g?tsam. the underscore
--character means 'one character, anything you like'. The leading
--space makes the logic simpler as it allows for occurences of the
--word at the beginning of the line
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE ' '+line LIKE '%[aeiou][aeiou]%'
--any line with two consecutive vowels in it
--the '[]' delimiters contain a range of characters
--and mean 'one character, anything in the range'
--here, it is a list of vowels
SELECT line FROM #poem WHERE ' '+line LIKE '%[^a-z][aeiou][aeiou]%'
-- returns any line containing a word beginning with two vowels
--the [^a-z] will mean a whitespace character in European
--languages as long as you set your collation accordingly!
/*
The String Datatypes
-------------------------
There are three basic string types (Unicode equivalents shown in
brackets):
Char (nChar)
Varchar (nVarchar)
Text (nText)
The nearest equivalents between the new 2005 string variables and
previous versions is as follows:
XML -> nText
Varchar(MAX) -> Text
nVarchar(MAX) -> nText
(If replicating from a SQL Server 2005 publisher to a SQL Server 2000
subscriber, this mapping is done automatically but it's well to be
aware of what is going on).
Most European languages can be represented by the eight-bit character
sets. For a 'global' system that can represent all languages, one
must opt for Unicode, and use NVarchar, or NChar or NText.
Peculiarly, the method of representing Unicode constants is case-
sensitive, being the uppercase N prefix (N stands for National
Language in the SQL-92 standard)*/
SELECT '˜˜˜',N'˜˜˜' --??? ˜˜˜
--in the first case the characters cannot be represented (musical
--notes, but in the second case, they can
/*Unicode constants are interpreted as Unicode data, and are not
evaluated using a code page. Unicode constants do have a collation,
though, which determines comparisons and case sensitivity. Unicode
data is stored using two bytes per character */
SELECT DATALENGTH(N'This one is a unicode string'),
DATALENGTH('This is not a unicode string')
/* ----------- -----------
56 28
You'll see that the first string needed twice the storage of the
second Unicode string constants support enhanced collations.
Strings and Collations
----------------------
Collations determine the result of sorts, and string comparisons.
Constants are assigned the default collation of the current database,
unless the COLLATE clause is used to override it.
to see what are available, use... */
SELECT * FROM ::fn_helpcollations()
/*... which produces a list of many collations, including the
following ...
Latin1_General_BIN
Latin1_General_CI_AI
Latin1_General_CI_AI_WS
Latin1_General_CI_AI_KS
Latin1_General_CI_AI_KS_WS
...which you can then try them out in these expressions*/
SELECT CASE WHEN 'A'<>'a' collate Latin1_General_CI_AI
THEN 'Different' ELSE 'same' END
-- same
SELECT CASE WHEN 'A'<>'a' collate Latin1_General_CS_AI
THEN 'Different' ELSE 'same' END
-- different
/*
So any function or stored procedure that is intended to be portable
across databases must be explicit about collation where necessary.
Collations can be selected at Server, Database, column or expression,
but we'll only illustrate its selection in an expression.*/
/*
Some of the jargon and abbreviations used in the names for the
collations require explanation
Binary BIN
Binary is the fastest sorting order. It sorts and compares
data based on the bit patterns defined for each character.
Binary sort order is case-sensitive (lowercase precedes
uppercase), and accent-sensitive.
If one chooses a language-based sort rather than a binary
sort, SQL Server follows sorting and comparison rules as
defined in dictionaries for the associated language or
alphabet.
Case-sensitive CS
Case-sensitive collation means that the uppercase and
lowercase versions of letters are considered different.
*/
SELECT CASE WHEN 'A'<>'a' collate Latin1_General_CS_AI
THEN 'Different' ELSE 'same' END
/*
Accent-sensitive AS
Accent-Sensitive collation means that, For example,
'a' is not equal to '¨¢'. and will sort strings so that
strings beginning with a but with different accents, will
not be sorted together*/
SELECT CASE WHEN 'a'<>'¨¢' collate Latin1_General_CI_AS
THEN 'Different' ELSE 'same' END
/*
Kana-sensitive KS
specifies that the two types of Japanese kana characters:
Hiragana and Katakana, are different
Width-sensitive WS
specifies that a single-byte (half-width) 'hankaku' character
and the same character represented as a double-byte
(full-width) ¡°zenkaku¡± character are different Half-width
characters has a glyph image that occupies half of the
character display cell.
Assignment and Truncation
-------------------------
String variables work similarly to string data in tables except for
the way SQL Server behaves if an attempt is made to assign a string
that is longer than the variable's length.
One has to be very careful to watch out for truncation when assigning
to string variables. Assigning to a string variable causes truncation
without causing an error. This is done in order to achieve
consistency with the behaviour of the CHAR datatype. */
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(20)
SELECT @Message=
'This is a long string which will get truncated without you knowing'
SELECT @Message
-----------------------------------------------
-- This is a long strin
--..whereas inserting into a table triggers an error
DECLARE @messageTable TABLE (message VARCHAR(20))
INSERT INTO @MessageTable(Message)
SELECT 'This is a very long long string which will overflow'
------------------------------------------------
-- String or binary data would be truncated.
-- The statement has been terminated.
--if you are passing a variable to a stored procedure or function,
--again it truncates without telling you!
CREATE PROCEDURE #spTestStringParameter
@message VARCHAR(20)
AS
SELECT @message
GO
EXECUTE #spTestStringParameter
'This is a string which will get truncated without you knowing'
/*
So, where necessary, it is wise to check the string inputs for
possible overflow. Here is a fragment of a stored procedure that
checks for overflow. I've been caught out many times so I advise
you to put in a precaution like this */
ALTER PROCEDURE #spTestStringParameter
@message VARCHAR(21)
AS
IF LEN(@message)=21
RAISERROR(
'input parameter @message, beginning ''%s...'' truncated!',
16,1,@message)
SELECT @message
GO
/*
The string Functions
--------------------
LEN
---
the LEN function returns the length of the string
Finding the length of a string is not always straightforward.*/
SELECT LEN('Who would have thought this was shorter ')--39
SELECT LEN(' ...than this')--51
/*...because the length of strings in SQL Server do not include
trailing spaces this means that, if you want the true length of a
string it must be done by */
SELECT LEN(REPLACE(
'This string has trailing spaces ',' ','|'))--45
--or
SELECT LEN(
'This string has trailing spaces '+'.')-1--45
/* in the first example, we substitute a different character for the
space (it doesn't matter what), whereas, in the second case we add a
non-space character so the spaces aren't trailing
ASCII and UNICODE
-----------------
The ASCII function returns the ASCII code of the first character of a
char or Varchar string it returns the ASCII value of ? if it can't do
so! */
SELECT CHAR(ASCII('P'))
/* so let's use a simple bit of code, illustrating the use of ASCII,
to display the character values of the characters in a string, (I've
used this in an emergency in the past)*/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
DECLARE @ASCIIValues VARCHAR(8000)
DECLARE @originalString VARCHAR(80)
SELECT @originalString=' What
is here?'
WHILE LEN(@originalString)>0
BEGIN
SELECT @ASCIIValues=COALESCE(@ASCIIValues+',','')
+CAST(ASCII(@OriginalString) AS VARCHAR)
SELECT @originalString=SUBSTRING(@originalString,2,80)
END
SELECT @AsciiValues
---------------------------------------------------------------------
/*
9,87,104,97,116,13,10,105,115,32,104,101,114,101,63
UNICODE does the same thing for a Unicode string that ASCII does for
CHARs or VARCHARs
NChar
-----
This will give you the character represented by the Unicode. Note
how one can represent character values as hex strings. Here, to
illustrate its use, are some useful Unicode currency symbols!*/
SELECT NCHAR(0x20AB),'Vietnamese Dong'
SELECT NCHAR(0x20AA),'Shequel'
SELECT NCHAR(0xA3),'pound sign'
SELECT NCHAR(0x20A3),'French Franc'
SELECT NCHAR(0x20Ac),'Euro'
SELECT NCHAR(0x20A8),'Rupee'
SELECT NCHAR(0x20A7),'Peseta'
SELECT NCHAR(0x20A6),'Naira'
/*You may need to set your results pane to Unicode to see these
properly!
CHAR
----
returns the ASCII character represented by the integer code.
In this example we’ll put a CR/Linefeed sequence into a string */
SELECT 'first line'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)+ 'second line'
-----------------------
-- first line
-- second line
/*
PATINDEX
--------
PATINDEX provides you with a great deal of versatility in
finding strings in TEXT data. It also allows you to search
by wildcard.
We could, for example, show the part of the string with the first
occurrence of a word that starts with two or more vowels*/
SELECT '...'+SUBSTRING(line,PATINDEX('% [aeiou][aeiou]%',line),10)
+'...'
FROM #poem
WHERE ' '+line LIKE '% [aeiou][aeiou]%'
/* the usefulness of patindex is fundamentally lessened by the fact
that there is no way of detecting the end of the sequence in the
original string that matched the wildcard. */
/*
CHARINDEX
---------
Charindex provides a standard way of searching within strings to find
a substring, and returning the starting position of the string.
It has the added versatility of allowing you to specify the starting
location of the search. This is especially useful in places where
you must find all occurrences of a string. Consider the following
simple routine which splits delimited strings (such as you might find
in 'serialised' data) into a table.
*/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.uftSplitVarcharToTable
(
@StringArray VARCHAR(8000),
@Delimiter VARCHAR(10)
)
RETURNS
@Results TABLE
(
SeqNo INT IDENTITY(1, 1), Item VARCHAR(8000)
)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Next INT
DECLARE @lenStringArray INT
DECLARE @lenDelimiter INT
DECLARE @ii INT
--initialise everything
SELECT @ii=1, @lenStringArray=LEN(REPLACE(@StringArray,' ','|')),
@lenDelimiter=LEN(REPLACE(@Delimiter,' ','|'))
--notice we have to be cautious about LEN with trailing spaces!
--while there is more of the string…
WHILE @ii<=@lenStringArray
BEGIN--find the next occurrence of the delimiter in the stringarray
SELECT @next=CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @StringArray + @Delimiter, @ii)
INSERT INTO @Results (Item)
SELECT SUBSTRING(@StringArray, @ii, @Next - @ii)
--note that we can get all the items from the list by appeending a
--delimiter to the final string
SELECT @ii=@Next+@lenDelimiter
END
RETURN
END
---------------------------------------------------------------------
--and the routine can be used simply like this...
SELECT * FROM dbo.uftSplitVarcharToTable(
'First|second|third|fourth|fifth|sixth','|')
/*
you should see all the items from the list in a table.
Once you have a function like this, you can then use it for such
esoteric tasks as, for example, stripping tags out of HTML or XML!
*/
DECLARE @HTMLString VARCHAR(8000),@Stripped VARCHAR(8000)
SELECT @HTMLString=
'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<div style="float left: width:300px;">
<p style="font-size:larger">
<strong><em>Song of the Open Road</em></strong>
</p>
I think that I shall never see<br />
A billboard Lovely as a tree<br />
Perhaps unless the billboards fall,<br />
I''ll never see a tree at all<br />
</div>
</body>
</html>'
SELECT @Stripped = COALESCE(@Stripped,'')
+ thetext FROM
(SELECT
[thetext]=SUBSTRING(Item, CHARINDEX('>', Item) + 1, 8000),
seqno
FROM dbo.uftSplitVarcharToTable(@HTMLString, '<'))f
WHERE theText <>CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
ORDER BY SeqNo
SELECT @Stripped
/* which will yield the following poem....
Song of the Open Road
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree
Perhaps unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all
Naturally, the technique works just as easily stripping bracketed
text from strings or any other delimiter!
So with just three of the built-in functions used in a user-defined
function, you have a powerful tool
REPLACE
-------
We have seen the REPLACE function being used already a a work-around
for LEN’s quirks. It is one of the most useful of the String
functions. It'll replace all occurrences of one string with another.
For example…*/
SELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
'Dear %1, you are considerably overdrawn to the tune of %2
in your %3 account.
Please phone our %4 for suggestions on debt management.'
,'%1','Miss Page'),'%2','£345.67'),'%3','current'),'%4','Mr Gross')
/*
which will give...
Dear Miss Page, you are considerably overdrawn to the tune of £345.67
in your current account.
Please phone our Mr Gross for suggestions on debt management.
or*/
SELECT LTRIM(REPLACE
(REPLACE
(REPLACE
(REPLACE
(REPLACE
(REPLACE(
' '+line+' ',
' was ',' were '),
' wasn''t',' weren''t'),
' me ',' you '),
' my ',' your '),
' I ',' You '),
' I''ve ',' You''ve '))
FROM #poem
--which changes the meaning entirely!
/*
STUFF
-----
STUFF is the Swiss army knife of string substitution. You can insert
any number of characters at a particular point in a string, with the
option of deleting existing characters at that point.
With apologies for repeating myself, here is a good example of the
use of STUFF, which inserts the ordinal suffix into a date. It is
difficult to do it as concisely any other way.*/
SELECT
DATENAME(dw,GETDATE())+', '
+ STUFF(CONVERT(CHAR(11),GETDATE(),106),3,0,
SUBSTRING(
'stndrdthththththththththththththththththstndrdthththththththst '
,(DATEPART(DAY,GETDATE())*2)-1,2))
/*Thursday, 02nd Nov 2006
One can even use it for awkward operations like deleting part of the
string, as I will show later on in the article.
Slicing Strings Up: LEFT RIGHT and SUBSTRING
-------------------------------------------
There are three functions that are generally used for slicing strings
into substrings. These are LEFT, RIGHT and SUBSTRING. LEFT gives
however many characters you specify from the left, or start, of the
string and RIGHT gives however many characters you specify from the
right, or end, of the string. SUBSTRING works like LEFT but allows
you to specify the start position.
Here is another string-slicer based on using CHARINDEX, LEFT and
STUFF which, likes the previous example, slices a series of delimited
strings into a table.
*/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.uftSecondSplitVarcharToTable
(
@StringArray VARCHAR(8000),
@Delimiter VARCHAR(10)
)
RETURNS
@Results TABLE
(
SeqNo INT IDENTITY(1, 1), Item VARCHAR(8000)
)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Splitpoint INT
DECLARE @lenDelimiter INT
--initialise everything
SELECT @lenDelimiter=LEN(REPLACE(@Delimiter,' ','|'))
--notice we have to be cautious about LEN with trailing spaces!
--while there is more of the string
WHILE 1=1
BEGIN
SELECT @splitpoint=CHARINDEX(@Delimiter,@StringArray)
IF @SplitPoint=0
BEGIN
INSERT INTO @Results (Item) SELECT @StringArray
BREAK
END
INSERT INTO @Results (Item)
SELECT LEFT(@StringArray,@Splitpoint-1)
--use STUFF to delete the first x characters of the string!
SELECT @StringArray=
STUFF(@StringArray,1,@Splitpoint+@lenDelimiter-1,'')
END
RETURN
END
---------------------------------------------------------------------
--So we can use this routine to get a word frequency count of the
--poem
DECLARE @LongString VARCHAR(8000)
SELECT @LongString
=COALESCE(@longString+' ','')+REPLACE(line,',','')+' '
FROM #poem
SELECT COUNT(*), item
FROM dbo.uftSecondSplitVarcharToTable(@LongString,' ')
WHERE item<> ''
GROUP BY item
ORDER BY COUNT(*),item DESC
/* RIGHT returns the rightmost characters of a string as with: */
SELECT RIGHT('Robyn Page',4)
/*
REPLICATE
---------
Just occasionally, the REPLICATE function is very handy, though
mainly in formatting fixed-width text. It creates a string, using
whatever character you specify, to whatever length you specify.
Here, we’ll demonstrate its use*/
SELECT '+'+REPLICATE('-',10)+'+'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
+REPLICATE('|'+REPLICATE(' ',10)+'|'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10),8)
+'+'+REPLICATE('-',10)+'+'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
/*
which draws a box! As an exercise, what about writing the poem within
a box?
+----------+
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
+----------+
SPACE
-----
SPACE(10) (return a string consisting of ten spaces) is equivalent to
REPLICATE(' ',10). The SPACE function just returns a string with
however many spaces you specify. It was more popular in the days of
printed reports on fixed-width fonts where the results had to be
printed in decimal point alignment, or right-aligned*/
e.g
SELECT SPACE(10-CHARINDEX('.',item+'.'))+item
FROM dbo.uftSecondSplitVarcharToTable(
'123.56,45.873,4.5,4.0,45768.9,354.67,12.0,66.97,45,4.5672',',')
/*-------------
123.56
45.873
4.5
4.0
45768.9
354.67
12.0
66.97
45
4.5672
*/
/*
REVERSE
-------
The REVERSE function, which merely returns the string backwards
execute this to discover the message... */
SELECT REPLACE(REVERSE(
'evil ot sah eh|hcihw ni|pmaws a ylno sa|nam a fo skniht|mreg a tub|
nem ot elbanoitcejbo|yrev era smreg'),'|','
')
/*REVERSE is occasionally very useful, and on those occasions
nothing else will do. In this example, we find the last occurrence of
a substring in a string and delete it*/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SELECT
REVERSE(STUFF(REVERSE(line),
CHARINDEX(REVERSE('There be '),REVERSE(line))
,9,''))
FROM
(
SELECT
[line]='There be no truth in that there be and that is what I say'
)f
--which yields...
--There be no truth in that and that is what I say
/*
Changing case: LOWER and UPPER
------------------------------
There are two useful functions, LOWER and UPPER, which are pretty
self-explanatory:
*/
SELECT UPPER('i have drunk too much caffeine'),
LOWER('I MUST CALM DOWN')
/*To do capitalisation, you may want a function like this, which
shows a more complex use of UPPER
*/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ufsCapitalize]
(
@string VARCHAR(8000)
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(8000)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Next INT
WHILE 1=1
BEGIN
--find word space followed by lower case letter
--This makes assumptions about the language
SELECT @next=
PATINDEX('%[^a-zA-Z][abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwzyz]%',
' '+@string collate Latin1_General_CS_AI)
IF @next =0 BREAK
SELECT @String =
STUFF(@String,@Next,1,UPPER(SUBSTRING(@String,@Next,1)))
END
RETURN @string
END
---------------------------------------------------------------------
--so now we try it out…
SELECT dbo.ufsCapitalize('leonard j poops jnr')
/*
which results in...
Leonard J Poops Jnr
Removing leading or trailing spaces RTRIM & LTRIM
-------------------------------------------------
There are two functions that can be used to trim either the
leading spaced or trailing spaces from strings*/
SELECT LTRIM(' this has leading spaces, ')
+RTRIM('this has trailing spaces ')
--or both!
SELECT '"'
+LTRIM(RTRIM(' This string has spaces fore and aft '))
+'"'
/*
Fuzzy searches, SOUNDEX and DIFFERENCE
---------------------------------------
For doing fuzzy searches, there are two functions based on the old
'soundex' algorithm These are of no more than historical interest
and they seem to be in there purely for historical reasons but I'd
be interested if anyone can point out a use for them. Even if they
worked in one language, which they don't, they aren't even
internationally valid.
The functions are SOUNDEX and DIFFERENCE
e.g.
*/
Select line FROM #poem WHERE DIFFERENCE(line,'I was')=4
/*
--Manipulating TEXT and NTEXT
--------------------------------
For the deprecated TEXT and NText datatype, there are a only a few
functions that will work with them. These are PATINDEX, TEXTVALID,
SUBSTRING, DATALENGTH and TEXTPTR
As these are either covered elsewhere, or too esoteric to be within
the scope of the workbench, I'd like to refer you to Book On Line,
which covers them very well
Some questions
--------------
1/ What happens when you assign a string to a Varchar variable whose
length is shorter then that of the string
2/ When replicating from a SQL 2005 publisher to a SQL 2000
subscriber, how is a nVarchar(MAX) mapped?
3/ How do you specify the sort order of strings?
4/ What is width-sensitivity in a collation?
5/ How would you, with one function, find the start of the first word
in a string that starts with a lower case character.
6/ How might you go about decimal-aligning numbers in a fixed-width
font?
7/ How might one go about stripping all text in brackets from a
VARCHAR variable?
8/ What collation would be a good choice id you were writing a SQL
Server Database that would be used in several European countries.
*/
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