Technical Article

Number of words within a phrase function

Most word count functions/procedures are based on some form of looping methods. If the table is large or there is a need to count the words in a number of columns, this can become quite an exercise. This function, based on a mathematical model, will work much faster and more efficient in counting the words […]

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2005-12-28 (first published: )

278 reads

Technical Article

Table Pivoting revisited

A lot of table pivoting scripts use cursors to reach the  desired results, but SQL scripting was developed to be utilized in a data set environment rather than sequential step-thru scripting.Normally, there are 3 types of Table Pivoting - 1) column explicit 2) column implicit and 3)single column.  COLUMN EXPLICIT will place the row value […]

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2003-05-29

428 reads

Technical Article

Phone Number Normalization even with literals

The script will do the following:- build a ten digit phone number regardless of input column size.- Ignores extensions- Ignores leading 1, as in 1(800)...- Ignores most special characters or spaces- converts literals to digitsIt can be easily convert to a UDFEnjoy.C. Z. Ovits

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2002-10-28

577 reads

Technical Article

Table structure in 8 x 11 w/size, rows & indexes

Using the sp_help to get a table structure is very cumbersome.  First, in order to print it you have to use"Results in Text" not "Results in Grid".  Second, the results are very wide screen-wise and very hard to read or print.  Third, you do not get the size or number rows with the same request.This […]

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2002-10-28

193 reads

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Question of the Day

The Decoded Value

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:

DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!';
DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX);

SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000)));
SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded) 

See possible answers