I have this piece of code in Oracle which I need to convert into SQL Server to get the same behavior. I have used the REPLACE function. It seems to be working but I just wanted to make sure.
REGEXP_REPLACE(
phonenumber,
'([[:digit:]]{3})([[:digit:]]{3})([[:digit:]]{4})',
'(\1)\2-\3'
) phonenumber
As Martin said in his answer, SQL Server does not have built-in RegEx functionality (and while it has not been suggested here, just to be clear: no, the [...] wildcard of LIKE and PATINDEX is not RegEx). If your data has little to no variation then yes, you can use some combination of T-SQL functions: REPLACE, SUBSTRING, LEFT, RIGHT, CHARINDEX, PATINDEX, FORMATMESSAGE, CONCAT, and maybe one or two others.
However, if the data / input has even a moderate level of complexity, then the built-in T-SQL functions will be at best be cumbersome, and at worst useless. In such cases it's possible to do actual RegEx via SQLCLR (as long as you aren't using Azure SQL Database Single DB or SQL Server 2017+ via AWS RDS), which is (restricted) .NET code running within SQL Server. You can either code your own / find examples here on S.O. or elsewhere, or try a pre-done library such as the one I created, SQL# (SQLsharp), the Free version of which contains several RegEx functions. Please note that SQLCLR, being .NET, is not a POSIX-based RegEx, and hence does not use POSIX character classes (meaning: you will need to use \d for "digits" instead of [:digit:]).
The level of complexity needed in this particular situation is unclear as the example code in the question implies that the data is simple and uniform (i.e. 1112223333) but the example data shown in a comment on the question appears to indicate that there might be dashes and/or spaces in the data (i.e. xxx- xxx xxxx).
If the data truly is uniform, then stick with the pure T-SQL solution provided by #MartinSmith. But, if the data is of sufficient complexity, then please consider the RegEx example below, using a SQLCLR function found in the Free version of my SQL# library (as mentioned earlier), that easily handles the 3 variations of input data and more:
SELECT SQL#.RegEx_Replace4k(tmp.phone,
N'\(?(\d{3})\)?[ .-]*(\d{3})[ .-]*(\d{4})', N'($1)$2-$3',
-1, -- count (-1 == unlimited)
1, -- start at
N'') -- RegEx options
FROM (VALUES (N'8885551212'),
(N'123- 456 7890'),
(N'(777) 555- 4653')
) tmp([phone]);
returns:
(888)555-1212
(123)456-7890
(777)555-4653
The RegEx pattern allows for:
0 or 1 (
3 decimal digits
0 or 1 )
0 or more of , ., or -
3 decimal digits
0 or more of , ., or -
4 decimal digits
NOTE
It was mentioned that the newer Language Extensions might be a better choice than SQLCLR. Language Extensions allow calling R / Python / Java code, hosted outside of SQL Server, via the sp_execute_external_script stored procedure. As the Tutorial: Search for a string using regular expressions (regex) in Java page shows, external scripts are actually not a good choice for many / most uses of RegEx in SQL Server. The main problems are:
Unlike with SQLCLR, the only interface for external scripts is a stored procedure. This means that you can't use any of that functionality inline in a query (SELECT, WHERE, etc).
With external scripts, you pass in the query, work on the results in the external language, and pass back a static result set. This means that compiled code now has to be more specialized (i.e. tightly-coupled) to the particular usage. Changing how the query uses RegEx and/or what columns are returned now requires editing, compiling, testing, and deploying the R / Python / Java code in addition to (and coordinated with!) the T-SQL changes.
I'm sure external scripts are absolutely wonderful, and a better choice than SQLCLR, in certain scenarios. But they certainly do not lend themselves well to the highly varied, and often ad hoc, nature of how RegEx is used (like many / most other functions).
SQL Server does not have native regex support. You would need to use CLR (or as #Lukasz Szozda points out in the comments one of the newer Language Extensions) .
If I have understood the regex correctly though it matches strings of 10 digits and assigns the first 3 to group 1, second 3 to group 2, and last 4 to group 3 and then uses the back references in the expression (\1)\2-\3
You can use built in string functions to do this as below
SELECT CASE
WHEN phonenumber LIKE REPLICATE('[0-9]', 10)
THEN FORMATMESSAGE('(%s)%s-%s',
LEFT(phonenumber, 3),
SUBSTRING(phonenumber, 4, 3),
RIGHT(phonenumber, 4))
ELSE phonenumber
END
You can write SQL function using CLR, that will wrap standard dotnet regex. I have wrote this and you can use it there. It will look this:
DECLARE #SourceText NVARCHAR(MAX) = N'My first line <br /> My second line';
DECLARE #RegexPattern NVARCHAR(MAX) = N'([<]br\s*/[>])';
DECLARE #Replacement NVARCHAR(MAX) = N''
DECLARE #IsCaseSensitive BIT = 0;
SELECT regex.Replace(#SourceText, #RegexPattern, #Replacement, #IsCaseSensitive);
Using the camel sql component seems like a good thing in a project using camel. But i dont see the point for cases when dynamic sql is needed. Use case :
on front end user can
select a type of record only and submit search, in this case where clause is : "from table1 where col1 = valueX1"
also select a date range for offer start date so then where clause looks like "from table1 where col1 = valueX1 and dateCol between (...)"
and so on for other UI if values are given total of 10 different columns, in different combinations
I tried to use a dynamic sql figured out three choices:
1. using a receipient list so route is selected at run time, seemed over kill.
2. using the body as a sql and using the useMessageBodyForSql=true
3. using a custom prepareStatementStrategy
For 2 and 3 i was not able to send parameter names or specify headers or properties to be part of values to be used in Prepared statement.
For .2. had to give the sql like :
select c1, c2 ... from t1 where x = ? and y = ?
and then a java util list with the values in order.
So - is there any advantage to using this? Any feature of the sql component that makes it better to use than to directly use the spring jdbc template that it uses?
I would suggest to use Camel Templating to make the statements dynamic like that:
to("freemarker://sql/template.ftl")
.log("${body}")
.to("sql:ignored?useMessageBodyForSql=true");
Note that query parameters are represented by a ? instead of a # symbol if the statement comes from the body:
-- sql/template.ftl
select count(*) as count
from a_table
<#if headers.namePattern?has_content>
where name like :?namePattern
</#if>
You might also switch to the MyBatis component which supports advanced templating via MyBatis but this comes with a much higher overhead in terms of coding and configuration.
I use UPDATE a SET GR_P = REPLACE(GR_P,'','') FROM mytable a to replace things.
But replace function is not working for below charter:
In Query analyzer it works but when I used SSIS Execute SQL task or OLEDB Source then it is giving me error:
No Connection manager is specified.
In Toad against Oracle (since that's one of your tags), I issued this (pressing ALT-12 to get the female symbol) and got 191 as a result. note selecting it back using CHR(191) shows an upside-down question mark though.
select ascii('♀') from dual;
Given that, this worked but it's Oracle syntax, your mileage may vary.
UPDATE mytable SET GR_P = REPLACE(GR_P, CHR(191));
Note if it does not work, that symbol could be for another control character. You may need to use a regular expression to eliminate all characters not in a-zA-Z0-9, etc. I suspect you'll need to update your tags to get a more accurate answer.
Maybe this info will help anyway. Please post back what you find out.
I am working on what should be a super simple query for SQL Server 2014. All I want to do is check that our systems can interface with SQL Server after updates, etc. So I need to just verify that it makes the connection correctly and finds a table within the Server.
Attempt 1:
SELECT TOP (1) *
From [X].[dbo].[Y]
WITH (NOLOCK);
But apparently 'top' is not a supported option with SQL Server 2014.
To add some more, here is the exact error I get when trying to run that: Syntax error. The token 'Top' is invalid. Please check the case of your operators (eg 'or' versus 'OR') and check that your functions use brackets after the function name eg Now(), eg Len("abc").
Attempt 2:
SELECT *
From [X].[dbo].[Y]
WITH (NOLOCK)
LIMIT (1);
That one tells me that I need to put data items between [], text between "", and functions as FunctionName(). However...I don't see where I missed any of those.
Can anybody possibly shed some light on why my query isn't going through? Any help would be appreciated.
The first attempt should work just fine:
SELECT TOP (1) *
From [dbo].[Y]
WITH (NOLOCK);
See example
If it doesn't work, you should include the error message.
My odbc connection string for connecting to DB2i looks like this:
Driver={Client Access ODBC Driver (32-bit)};system=xx.xx.xx.xx;dbq=LIB1 LIB2 LIB3 LIB4 LIB5 LIB6 LIB7 LIB8;languageid=ENU;qrystglmt=-1;cmt=0;signon=1
The above connection string specifies multiple libraries/schemas for use. But when I try to access a file/table from a library other than the first one (like from LIB2...LIB8) I get a exception saying "FILE xx not found in LIB1"
Why does not it automatically search for the file/table in other specified libraries, it searches for the file in the first library only?
I need a workaround for this situation.
Use "system naming" mode, by adding naming=1 to your connection string.
In your library list, place a comma before the first library.
Driver={Client Access ODBC Driver (32-bit)};system=systemname;naming=1;
dbq=,LIB1,LIB2,LIB3,LIB4,LIB5,LIB6,LIB7,LIB8;languageid=ENU;cmt=0;signon=1
This works as documented in the manual:
The library list is used for resolving unqualified stored procedure calls and finding libraries in catalog API calls. ...
Note:
The first library listed in this property will also be the default library, which is used to resolve unqualified names in SQL statements.
As stated above, Schema/library list is used to resolve functions/procedure names, not tables.
Let assume you need to read data from lib1.tab1 and lib2.tab2;
Here my personal workarounds (from easy to complex):
a) ask the db admin to have - for each table you need to use - the corresponding schema name, then do "select * from lib1.tab1 join lib2.tab2 on [...]" ;-)
b) ask the db admin to create on schema "MyAlias" several alias (create alias) for each table you want to use. Then do "set current schema=MyAlias" followed by all the SQL statement you need e.g. "select * from tab1 join tab2". Since you’re querying myalias.tab1 which is an alias pointing to table lib1.tab1 it should work.
c) Complex: create your own SQL function that returns the corresponding schema_name for a table (e.g. myfunct('TAB1'). This could be done reading system view “qsys2.systables” where table_name=’TAB1’ and returning TABLE_SCHEMA column, which is a varchar(128). Once you got it, build up a dynamically prepared using the variable you just obtained. E.g.
"set mylib = myfunct('TAB1').
"set mystmt = 'select * from '||table_schema || ‘.tab1’ …”
Prepare mystmt and then execute mystmt.
I did something similar in VBA using ado ibmdrda and it worked.
hope this helps.
f.