That's not leaving something out. That's...

TomThomson (12/17/2016)

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Brandie Tarvin (12/12/2016)

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Gah. Less than a week until my parents visit for two weeks and I catch a cold. The last thing I need to do is give it...

Rasmus Remmer Bielidt (1/5/2017)

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I've had to troubleshoot queries where the developer had forgotten an ELSE clause and the whole thing returned NULL (which was not expected).

this will yield NULL due...

Rasmus Remmer Bielidt (1/5/2017)

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Brandie Tarvin (1/5/2017)

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Rasmus Remmer Bielidt (1/5/2017)

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Both options have their uses for sure.

I didn't see anybody making this point, but COALESCE() absolutely needs a non-null argument or it...

Rasmus Remmer Bielidt (1/5/2017)

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Both options have their uses for sure.

I didn't see anybody making this point, but COALESCE() absolutely needs a non-null argument or it will throw an error where...

drew.allen (1/4/2017)

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CASE is clearly more flexible than COALESCE, because it can perform any conditional test whereas COALESCE only tests whether an expression is NULL, and because it can return any...

Not at all off topic. You made some very good points. As did Luis about using the functions.

Thank you both...

As I said, these...

Just to clarify. The data is coming from a vendor-created database. I cannot make changes to it. I can, however, send emails to the users saying "Fix this item, it...

Eric M Russell (1/4/2017)

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As a side note, it would be great if all valid codes could be pre-loaded into a primary keyed master table, then data validation could be enforced...

Luis Cazares (1/4/2017)

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Does this works?

IF (SELECT OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#MyTemp')) IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE #MyTemp;

CREATE TABLE #MyTemp (QuestionableColumn CHAR(20));

INSERT INTO #MyTemp (QuestionableColumn)

VALUES ('ABC1GKUCEEF7AR169582'), --Good value

('ABC2G1WG5E37D1157775'), --Good value

('BCD3GTU2TEC9FG119962'), --Good...

Thom A (1/4/2017)

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Brandie Tarvin (1/4/2017)

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Thom A (1/4/2017)

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I'm a little confused,on one part. You stated that "a hyphen is only allowed after the first character", however that the value "ABC-1245Z" is...

drew.allen (1/4/2017)

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But you can...

The main differences between CASE and COALESCE() are that COALESCE() is faster to type and CASE gives you other data manipulation options. Otherwise, they are mostly identical in the way...

Thom A (1/4/2017)

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I'm a little confused,on one part. You stated that "a hyphen is only allowed after the first character", however that the value "ABC-1245Z" is acceptable. The hyphen is...