Miscellaneous

Technical Article

Smooshing String Function

  • Script

Smooshing - The act of removing all non-alphanumeric characters from a string. We have found several areas of our application where we need to perform cleaning on strings. The following is a SQL function which can be used to remove any non-alphanumeric characters. To use the function create the script and then SELECT dbo.fn_SmooshIt('B?\RU.,C>}E') will […]

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2002-07-26

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Technical Article

String-search on objects in a specified database

  • Script

Procedure 'p_find_string' allows users to specify any database on a server in searching for a specified character string.  Supported for string-searching:  table columns, view columns, trigger, function, and procedure code.  Produces a report showing: object type, owner, object name, column id (for tables and views) or what line number (for triggers, functions, and procedures), and […]

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2002-07-22

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Technical Article

Slice out string from within specified delimiters

  • Script

Scalar function 'f_delimited' slices out of a passed-in string, from a specified position inside the string, that segment of it which is delimited on one or both sides by a specified delimiter.Example:  Print out a segment of a 'syscomments.text' column for a stored procedure 'p_proc', representing a line of code (i.e., the segment of 'syscomments.text' […]

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2002-07-22

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Technical Article

Count # occurrences of one string inside another

  • Script

Scalar function 'f_contains' counts the number of times the first argument occurs within the second argument.Given:  @arg1, @arg2 (both VARCHAR), @cnt INTSELECT @cnt = dbo.f_contains (@f_search_for = @arg1                            , @f_container  = @arg2)

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2002-07-22

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Technical Article

Using UDFs to avoid cursors

  • Script

Let's say you have 2 tables: a Contacts table and a PhoneNumbers table (which stores all the phone numbers for each contact).  You are asked to write a query that returns each contact's name and a comma-delimited string of phone numbers for each contact, something like this:FirstName    LastName   PhoneNumbers---------    --------   --------------------------John      […]

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2002-07-22

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Technical Article

sp_dir - Procedure to list database objects

  • Script

Lists objects from database. Similar to 'dir' command from DOS 🙂Typical usage sp_dir 't' 'order*', 1     - returns list of all tables whose name start with 'order' plus their columns and data typessp_dir 'p' 'custom*_sp' -  returns list of all stored procedures whose name start with 'custom' and end up with '_sp'For list of […]

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2002-07-19

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Question of the Day

Using CHOOSE()

We have this code that sets some status values and then queries them using the CHOOSE() function in SQL Server 2025.

CREATE TABLE Status
(
    StatusID INT,
    StatusDescription VARCHAR(20)
);
GO
INSERT dbo.Status
(
    StatusID,
    StatusDescription
)
VALUES
(0, 'Uncategorized'),
(1, 'Active'),
(2, 'Inactive'),
(3, 'Temp');

GO
SELECT CHOOSE(StatusID, 'Unknown', 'Active', 'Inactive', 'Temporary')
FROM Status;
When the SELECT runs, what is returned?

See possible answers