Roman Numerals to integers, and Vice Versa, in SQL:

Here are a couple of functions to convert between roman numerals and integers. They are handy for all sorts of...

Brute-force searching for data.

Today, I needed a way of searching through a database, any database, looking for a certain string. The procedure I...

Belt and braces

A moment ago, I was deep in some coding. What it was is not entirely relevant, With a page-full of...

'Topping and Tailing' strings in database tables

/*

When you are having to extract just part of a string in TSQL, there are a number of techniques you...

A Quick TRIM, Sir?

The other day, I was answering a question on the ASK.SQLSERVERCENTRAL.COM forum from a programmer who had hit a
problem...

Silly Billiseconds

You have to admire Microsoft for sticking to their guns, even when being palpably stupid. I refer, of course to...

Listing members of a group in SQL Server.

In SQL we are used to the GROUP BY and the type of result it produces. In real life, we...

Cleaning up excess contiguous spaces in strings. A mystery.

/* Have you ever come across the problem where you have to remove spaces from a string that has too many?...

COMPUTE: now it is going, what else will do it?

/*I'd be very surprised if you've ever used the old COMPUTE clause in SQL Server. It is a bit mad,...

Ambiguities and the wild object.oriented brigades

--Whilst trying to design a more effective way of detecting dependencies in a SQL Server database, I was mulling over...