Scripts

Technical Article

Smooshing String Function

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

555 reads

Technical Article

Retrieve column attributes

Given database, owner, table, and column names, this procedure returns one from among several column attributes such as type definition, defaults, and other types of constraints.  E.g., to retrieve the type definition of the 'pubs' database's 'author.address':DECLARE @attrib VARCHAR (500)      , @msg    VARCHAR (8000)EXEC p_get_column_attribute 'TYPEDEF'              […]

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2002-07-24

135 reads

Technical Article

Count # occurrences of one string inside another

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

390 reads

Technical Article

Slice out string from within specified delimiters

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

120 reads

Technical Article

String-search on objects in a specified database

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

147 reads

Technical Article

Using UDFs to avoid cursors

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

1,034 reads

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Question of the Day

The String Distance I

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned by this code:

SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE('Steve', 'Stan')
Assume preview features are enabled.

See possible answers