Question

SELECT Query with a consistent varchar format?

Asked by: zeeshanbutt

I have a table Product with a field called ProductID of nvarchar(50) data type. There are more than 151,000 records. The values look like as follows (example).

1
10
100
1000
10000-00719
10009-20050
1001
1-00149-00530
10029-31181
3-17-90710-02330
3-17-90710-02484
3-17-91710-02477

As you can see the format and length of the ProductID field is not very consistent. The length of characters in the ProductID varies from 1 to 16, and it occurs with a hyphen, or with two hyphen, or without a hyphen.

Now I want to have a SELECT query which get all the ProductID in the following format only.

XXXXXXXX-XXXXX

As you can see the output ProductID must have a total of 14 characters only; including one hyphen after the first 8 characters from left. If the original ProductID has less characters the SELECT should put leading zeros.

So some examples are;
a) the ProductID 1 should output as 00000000-00001
b) the ProductID 3-17-90710-02330 should output as 31790710-02330
c) the ProductID 10029-31181 should output as 00010029-31181
d) the ProductID 1-00149-00530 should output as 00100149-00530


How can I achieve this in a SELECT query? Please help.

Thanks a in advance for a quick help.

Zee

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Asked On
2009-02-03 at 09:05:12ID24108774
Tags

SELECT QUERY

,

T-SQL

,

Varcharc

,

character formatting

,

string function

Topics

Voice XML

,

MS SQL Server

Participating Experts
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Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: BrandonGalderisiPosted on 2009-02-03 at 09:18:22ID: 23539463

Is changing the data in the table an option, or are you looking to format it on READ?

Also, to verify, what version of SQL Server?

 

by: dtoddPosted on 2009-02-03 at 09:20:19ID: 23539482

Hi,

select st.*
from dbo.sometable st
where
  len( st.ProductID ) = 14
  and charindex( '-', st.ProductID ) = 9 -- maybe 8

HTH
  David

 

by: ralmadaPosted on 2009-02-03 at 10:50:19ID: 23540574

I would leave formatting to your presentation layer unless its absolutely necessary. To do that I would use the "format" function that comes with the programming language you might be using.

 

by: zeeshanbuttPosted on 2009-02-03 at 11:29:17ID: 23541085

Sorry but none of the above workout.

Following is a correct query.

SELECT CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('-',ProductID)> 0 THEN RIGHT('00000000' +REPLACE(LEFT(ProductID,LEN(ProductID)-6),'-',''),8) + RIGHT(ProductID,6) ELSE '00000000-'+ RIGHT('00000'+ ProductID,5) END NewProductID
FROM product

Thanks anyway for all your help.

Zee

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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