Imporatnt SQL Strings Functions

String Functions in SQL

Mastering String Functions in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 

  • String functions are a key component of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), allowing you to manipulate and transform text data. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most commonly used string functions in SSMS, along with their syntax and examples. 

SUBSTRING 

  • SUBSTRING: The SUBSTRING function allows you to extract a substring from a larger string. Its syntax is as follows: 

For example, the following query would return the first three characters of the “product_name” field in the “products” table: 

Result: 

CONCAT 

  • CONCAT: The CONCAT function allows you to concatenate two or more strings together. Its syntax is as follows: 

For example, the following query would concatenate the “first_name” and “last_name” fields from the “customers” table: 

Result: 

LEN 

  • LEN: The LEN function returns the length of a string. Its syntax is as follows: 

For example, the following query would return the length of the “product_description” field in the “products” table: 

Result:  

CHARINDEX 

  • CHARINDEX: The CHARINDEX function returns the starting position of a specified string within another string. Its syntax is as follows: 

For example, the following query would return the position of the letter “o” in the “product_name” field of the “products” table: 

Result:  

REPLACE 

  • REPLACE: The REPLACE function allows you to replace one string with another string within a larger string. Its syntax is as follows: 

For example, the following query would replace all occurrences of the word “red” with “blue” in the “product_description” field of the “products” table: 

Result:  

STUFF 

  • The STUFF function in SSMS allows you to insert a string into another string at a specified position, replacing a specified length of characters. Here’s an example: 

Suppose we have the string ‘Hello, World!’ and we want to replace the comma with an exclamation mark, resulting in ‘Hello! World!’. We can use the STUFF function to achieve this as follows: 

Result:   

  • The first argument is the input string ‘Hello, World!‘, the second argument is the position where we want to start inserting the replacement string (in this case, the position of the comma), the third argument is the length of characters we want to replace (in this case, 1), and the fourth argument is the replacement string we want to insert (in this case, the exclamation mark). 
  • The output of this query will be ‘Hello! World!‘. 
  • This is just one example of how the STUFF function can be used in SSMS. It can be a very powerful tool for manipulating strings in SQL queries. 

FORMAT 

  • The FORMAT function in SSMS is used to format strings with dynamic values. 
  • The function uses placeholders in the string to indicate where values should be inserted. 
  • Values to be inserted are provided as additional arguments to the function, separated by commas. 
  • The function returns the formatted string with values inserted. 

Examples: 

  • In this example, we have included a hyphen between the respective fields 
  • The code SELECT FORMAT(123456789, ‘##-##-#####’) is a SQL statement that formats the number 123456789 into a string with a specific pattern. 
  • The FORMAT() function in SQL is used to format the value of an expression into a specific format. The first argument of the function is the value to be formatted, and the second argument is the format string. 
  • In this case, the value 123456789 is being formatted with the format string ‘##-##-#####’. The format string specifies the pattern in which the value should be formatted. The # character is used as a placeholder for digits in the value, and the – character is used to separate the digits according to the desired pattern. 
  • So, the output of the code will be a string formatted as 12-34-56789. The first two digits are separated from the next two by a dash, and the next five digits are separated from the previous ones by another dash, according to the pattern specified in the format string. 

Result:  

  •  
  • The code snippet you provided is a SQL Server statement that declares a DATETIME variable named @d and assigns it the value ’12/01/2018′, which represents December 1st, 2018. 
  • The FORMAT() function is then used to format the date in the @d variable into different formats for three different cultures – US English, Norwegian, and Zulu. The FORMAT() function takes three arguments: the value to be formatted, the format string, and the culture or language to use for the formatting. 
  • In the first SELECT statement, the FORMAT() function is used to format the date in @d in US English culture using the format string ‘d’. The ‘d’ format specifier represents the short date pattern, which is a culture-specific representation of the date using the shortest possible format. 
  • In the second SELECT statement, the FORMAT() function is used to format the date in @d in Norwegian culture using the format string ‘d’. The ‘no’ argument specifies the Norwegian culture. The short date pattern for Norwegian culture is different than the US English culture, so the formatted date will be different than the first result. 
  • In the third SELECT statement, the FORMAT() function is used to format the date in @d in Zulu culture using the format string ‘d’. The ‘zu’ argument specifies the Zulu culture. Again, since the short date pattern for Zulu culture is different than both US English and Norwegian cultures, the formatted date will be different than both previous results. 
  • Therefore, the output of this code will be three columns containing the formatted date values in US English, Norwegian, and Zulu cultures, respectively, based on the format string and culture specified for each column. 

Result: 

REPLICATE 

  • The REPLICATE function is an aggregate function in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) that repeats a string a specified number of times and returns the concatenated result. Here’s the syntax: 

We can use the REPLICATE function to concatenate a string of asterisks (*) based on the quantity of each product ordered, like so: 

SELECT [productname],  

SUM([unitprice]) AS TotalQuantity,  

REPLICATE(‘*’, SUM([unitprice])) AS QuantityStars  

FROM  [Production].[Products] 

GROUP BY ProductName 

  • The code snippet you provided is a SQL Server statement that retrieves data from the Products table in the Production schema. It calculates the total unit price of each product and displays the results along with a representation of the total unit price using asterisks. 
  • The SELECT statement specifies three columns to be returned: productname, TotalQuantity, and QuantityStars. 
  • The SUM() function is used to calculate the total unit price of each product, and it is aliased as TotalQuantity. The GROUP BY clause groups the results by the ProductName column, so the SUM() function is applied to each group separately. 
  • The REPLICATE() function is then used to generate a string of asterisks that represents the total unit price for each product. The SUM([unitprice]) expression is used as the second argument to REPLICATE(), which means that the function will generate a string with a number of asterisks equal to the total unit price for each product. 
  • The resulting output will have three columns. The first column will contain the product names, the second column will contain the total unit price for each product, and the third column will contain a string of asterisks with a length equal to the total unit price for each product. This allows the results to be displayed in a more visually appealing way, where the length of the asterisk string represents the magnitude of the total unit price. 

Result: 

RTRIM 

  • In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), the RTRIM aggregate function removes trailing spaces from a string expression. The RTRIM function is typically used in conjunction with the GROUP BY clause to aggregate data based on a column or expression, while removing any trailing spaces. 

Here is an example of using RTRIM as an aggregate function: 

  1. SELECT City, RTRIM(City) AS RTCity 

FROM [HR].[Employees] 

  • The code snippet you provided is a SQL Server statement that retrieves data from the Employees table in the HR schema. It selects the City column and applies the RTRIM function to it to remove any trailing spaces, and aliases the result as RTCity. 
  • The RTRIM function is a built-in string function in SQL Server that removes trailing spaces from a string expression. In this case, it is applied to the City column of the Employees table. The resulting output will contain two columns – City and RTCity. 
  • The first column, City, will contain the original values of the City column from the Employees table. The second column, RTCity, will contain the trimmed values of the City column, with any trailing spaces removed. 
  • This code can be useful in scenarios where trailing spaces may be present in the data and could cause problems when performing string comparisons or grouping. By applying the RTRIM function to the data, any trailing spaces are removed, making it easier to compare and group the data without having to worry about the presence of trailing spaces. 

Result: 

  1. SELECT RTRIM(‘BitaCloud        ‘) AS RightTrimmedStringValue; 
  • The code snippet you provided is a SQL Server statement that uses the RTRIM function to remove trailing spaces from a string value. Specifically, it applies the RTRIM function to the string ‘BitaCloud ‘, which contains trailing spaces, and aliases the resulting trimmed string as RightTrimmedStringValue. 
  • The RTRIM function is a built-in string function in SQL Server that removes trailing spaces from a string expression. In this case, it is applied to the string value ‘BitaCloud ‘. The resulting output will contain a single column named RightTrimmedStringValue, which will contain the trimmed string value ‘BitaCloud’ with no trailing spaces. 
  • This code can be useful in scenarios where string values may contain trailing spaces that need to be removed, such as when performing string comparisons or concatenation. By applying the RTRIM function to the string value, any trailing spaces are removed, making it easier to perform these operations without having to worry about the presence of trailing spaces. 

Result: 

LTRIM 

  • There is no built-in LTRIM aggregate function in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). The LTRIM function is a built-in string function in SQL Server that removes leading spaces from a string expression, and it can be used in combination with aggregate functions to manipulate string data. 
  1. SELECT LTRIM(‘   BitaCloud’) 
  • This code is a SQL Server statement that uses the built-in LTRIM function to remove any leading spaces from a given string value. In this case, the function is applied to the string value ‘ BitaCloud’, which contains leading spaces, and returns the trimmed string value ‘BitaCloud’. 
  • The LTRIM function is a built-in string function in SQL Server that removes leading spaces from a string expression. In this example, it is applied to the string value ‘ BitaCloud’. The function evaluates the string from left to right and removes any leading spaces, leaving only the non-space characters. 
  • The resulting output of this query will contain a single column with the trimmed string value ‘BitaCloud’. This code can be useful in scenarios where string values may contain leading spaces that need to be removed, such as when performing string comparisons or concatenation. By applying the LTRIM function to the string value, any leading spaces are removed, making it easier to perform these operations without having to worry about the presence of leading spaces. 

Result: 

  1.  

This SQL query retrieves data from the [HR].[Employees] table in the following way: 

  • The inner SELECT statement is a subquery that retrieves the empid of an employee with ID equal to 5. This subquery is enclosed in parentheses and returns a single value, which is then used as a column in the final output. 
  • The outer SELECT statement retrieves two columns: the lastname column from the [HR].[Employees] table, and the trimmed firstname column (using the LTRIM function to remove any leading spaces). These columns are selected for all employees whose empid is less than or equal to 5. 
  • The result set will have two columns: empid (with a single value of 5) and the trimmed firstname and lastname columns for all employees with empid less than or equal to 5. 

It is important to note that since the subquery in the SELECT statement is enclosed in parentheses and returns a single value, the outer query will repeat this value for every row in the final result set. This means that the empid value in the final result set will be 5 for every row. 

Result: 

Thanks & Regards, 

Mr. Tushar Kashyap  

JR HR Team Supporter 

BITA Cloud Info Tech Pvt. Ltd. 

Learn Super Easy 

(Email—Tushar.kashyap.bita@gmail.com)