Duplicate post deleted...

Sample data in field:

PartNbr|#@|Machine|#@|  ttxx23|#@|plc1|#@|  ttxx24|#@|plc2

So it looks like PartNbr|#@|Machine|   -- these are the fields Then |  ttxx23| -- when it sees a space data starts

partnbr  Machine ttxx23   ...

Des Norton has the right idea but it can be simplified a bit.  You can replace the GETDATE() with a variable in the following, in case you want to turn...

select cast(replace(cast(body as nvarchar(max)),'???','?') as ntext) from lookuptable2 where description like '???%'

I used this template and can see that it did indeed did do the replace, but how do...

Funny thing there... I've never actually tested it for performance because I never...

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Jeff Moden. Reason: Added Wayne Sheffield's post

I've found that automation isn't the reason for decreased skills.  Rather, I've found that automation is necessary because people simply don't have the skills and, apparently, have little interest in...

Why?  What "magic" do you folks expect to suddenly occur?  Stop an think...

I don't believe that automation is the cause of a lack of skills.  I rather think it's the other way around... Automation has become necessary due to a lack of...

1. Read the NTEXT into an NVARCHAR(MAX).
2. Use a Tally table function to read each character.  If it's not the letters A-Z or a-z or 0-9 or common symbols, then...

Please see the following article to easily do exactly what you ask.

https://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/hierarchies-on-steroids-2-a-replacement-for-nested-sets-calculations-1

IMHO, the best thing said on this thread is...

Measuring performance before and after the addition of the index and an examination of your execution plans (which are not a...

Hi Jeff,

Without the leading zeroes (e.g. instead of 0.123 it would show in the .csv file .123), I could not load the file into BigQuery.  Import function was giving...

That's a long thread.  You might want to provide the post number for where we ended up on that thread.

If it will always be that you have a non-numeric first character and the rest are numeric, this will work very quickly...

 SELECT CONVERT(INT,SUBSTRING(yourstring,2,8000))

I have to ask... why is it important to have leading zeros on this particular bit of numeric data in the CSV?  Or is it not a CSV file after...