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stripping data from a Varchar feild in Crystal 2008

Good Morning Experts,

I have a field in a SQL 2005 database that is "Address Line 1" which contains street number, street name and in some cases unit numbers as well (sometimes proceeded by a comma, someties not. I need to export this data as two or if unit number exists then three seperate feilds, "Street Number" "Street Name" and "Unit Number" and I need to remove the comma if one exists as this will be sent as a comma delimeted file in the end. In addition the numeric portion of the address for example "123 anystreet" sometimes will contains a dash, for example "12-24 anystreet". I need to maintain the dash character in it's existing location. Any ideas?

To give an example of the variations I've seen in the data I've got:
"123 anystreet"
"123 anystreet, Unit 1"
"123 anystreet Unit 1"

"123-45 anystreet"
"123-45 anystreet, Unit 1"
"123-45 anystreet Unit1"
"123-45 anystreet Unit 1c"
"123-45 anystreet unit 1-3c & 2-6b"

rmail

You could break the string on the first space and the word 'unit':
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/697519/split-function-equivalent-in-tsql

Dan Violet Sagmiller (He/Him)

There is no clean way to do this, because some people may use "Apt", "Suite", etc... or skip a prefix altogether and give an address like this:

3326 Adler Lane B
instead of
3326 Adler Lane, Apt B
or
3326 Adler Lane Ste B

If you only had a few things to worry about, like Apt or Unit, I would say go for writing your own code to sort it, but there are so many variations that could exist that it would be tough, with a strong chance of errors that won't be caught with addresses that will get mangled.

So, 2 things

1) Reconsider. What value is there to having these records separated. Is there something your company does that will strongly benefit from doing this uncommon practice? I've had times that I considered it, but it never served any real value. There is a phrase for garbled data like this, "Garbage In, Garbage Out." But, I'll leave the business decisions to you/your company.

2) Use Google API's. Their Canonical Address API lets you enter any address, and it will return if it knows this address, and the correct way to review it, including things like converting "ln" to "lane" or ", 3C" to ", Unit 3C"
- Then you can take the data and insert it as you see fit. Since the address format will be stable, you can depend on your parsing code to operate well.
- I believe the free version is limited to about 1000 addresses a day, but you can use that to prove your app works, and then pay a small fee to open it up for a bulk transmission to convert everything.
- Also, you can flag anything Google didn't recognize, which usually is low, and deal with those ones manually, Often its a typo converting "Lane" to "Street" for instance, but the house number only exists on Lane.

Mike McCracken

Try this formula

WhilePrintingRecords;
Global StringVar Array AddressParts;
Global StringVar StreetNumber;
Global StringVar StreetName;
Global StringVar UnitNumber;
Local NumberVar Index;

If Not IsNull(YourField) then
(
    AddressParts := Split({YourField}," ");
    StreetNumber := AddressParts[1];
    If UBound(AddressParts] >= 2 then
        StreetName := Replace(AddressParts[2],",","");
    If UBound(AddressParts] >= 3 then
        For Index := 3 to UBound(AddressParts) do
             UnitNumber := UnitNumber & " " & AddressParts[Index];
)
""

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To display them in the report use 1 formula per part

WhilePrintingRecords;
Global StringVar StreetNumber;
StreetNumber

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Similar formulas for the other 2 parts

mlmcc

ISBTECH

ASKER

@ mlmcc, I paste that into a formula and I get the following error:
12-26-2012-10-03-09-AM.png

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Mike McCracken

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ISBTECH

ASKER

Amazing as always! Thanks!