Erin i have this saved in my snippets, that will get you 90% there;

this is enumerating the bits as to wether they are true or false.

;WITH myStrings (val)

AS (

SELECT '00001001001' UNION ALL

SELECT '10101' UNION ALL

SELECT '1010100' UNION ALL

SELECT '010111111' )

,

FormattedStrings AS (

SELECT right('0000000000000000000000000000000' + val ,31) As sval

FROM myStrings),

MiniTally AS (

SELECT TOP 31 row_number() OVER (order by name) As N from sys.columns order by name )

select

sval,

MiniTally.N,

CONVERT(int,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(sval),MiniTally.N,1)) As bval,

POWER(2,N-1) As thePower,

CASE

WHEN (CONVERT(int,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(sval),MiniTally.N,1)) & 1) = 0

THEN 'False'

ELSE 'True'

END As [True?]

FROM FormattedStrings

CROSS JOIN MiniTally

order by sval,MiniTally.N

from there, if you filtered it for only true, and used FOR XML to concatenate the [thePower] column, you'd have what you were asking for.

does that help?

i can look at making the concat work if you are a bit weak on that too.