That might start a little war... not sure it's a good idea.

Is that because you might...

np, sets a challenge to rethink the solution, always a good idea

Remi is right in that the queries are not the same

CONTAINS(ArticleDescription, 'magazine')

is the same as

LIKE '% magazine %'  (yes there is a space either side of the word...

Any string manipulation is slow and it is all relative to the size of the dataset

therefore another alternative

SET @RefDes = ''

select  @RefDes...

SELECT *

FROM Products WHERE ProductID IN (31, 5, 7, 9, 12)

ORDER BY CHARINDEX(', '+CAST(ProductID as varchar)+',',','+'31, 5, 7, 9, 12'+',')

or if using variable/parameter

DECLARE @ID varchar(100)

SET @ID...

SET @RefDes = ''

select  @RefDes = @RefDes +

  CASE WHEN CHARINDEX(','+ref_des+', ',','+@RefDes)>0 THEN '' ELSE ref_des + ', ' END

from  A 

right outer JOIN

    B ON A.job...

1022

daily dts import from 3rd party database

WHEN PATINDEX('[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][.]',CardExpDate) > 0 THEN STUFF(LEFT(CardExpDate,4),3,0,'20')

p.s. you can do the RTRIM as well if you wish