I have a string in a MS 2000 SQL db and need to remove just the SSN using the select satement. I don't have the option of using an external app. The other fun part is that the locaton of the SSN is not always the same.
[B-Day][First Name][SSN][POB]
12121970John123-45-6789Las Vages
Or
[B-Day][First Name][Last Name][SSN][POB]
12121970JohnDoe123-45-6789Las Vages
I need RegEx of the SQL variety!
Any ideas?
SELECT substring(a, 1, PatIndex('%[0-9][0-9][0-9]-%', a) - 3)
+ substring(a, PatIndex('%[0-9][0-9][0-9]-%', a) + 9, 100) FROM myTable
myTable is the table, "a" is the name of the column.
EDIT: Ofcourse there is some assumption regarding social security number format.
Also, I have added an arbitrary number 100 to pick the string to the end. You can increase it if your string is more than that.
Assuming you have access to the server itself, here is an article which describes how to add a Regex function using VBScript to MSSQL 2000. From there the regex for matching a SSN is quite simple ([0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}). You may need to expand the function provided in the article to support replacing as well as matching.
Related
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);
In a SQL server database, I have a table Messages with the following columns:
Id INT(1,1)
Detail VARCHAR(5000)
DatetimeEntered DATETIME
PersonEntered VARCHAR(25)
Messages are pretty basic, and only allow alphanumeric characters and a handful of special characters, which are as follows:
`¬!"£$%^&*()-_=+[{]};:'##~\|,<.>/?
Ignoring the bulk of the special characters bar the apostrophe, what I need is a way to list each word along with how many times the word occurs in the Detail column, which I can then filter by PersonEntered and DatetimeEntered.
Example output:
Word Frequency
-----------------
a 11280
the 10102
and 8845
when 2024
don't 2013
.
.
.
It doesn't need to be particularly clever. It is perfectly fine if dont and don't are treated as separate words.
I'm having trouble splitting out the words into a temporary table called #Words.
Once I have a temporary table, I would apply the following query:
SELECT
Word,
SUM(Word) AS WordCount
FROM #Words
GROUP BY Word
ORDER BY SUM(Word) DESC
Please help.
Personally, I would strip out almost all the special characters, and then use a splitter on the space character. Of your permitted characters, only ' is going to appear in a word; anything else is going to be grammatical.
You haven't posted what version of SQL you're using, so I've going to use SQL Server 2017 syntax. If you don't have the latest version, you'll need to replace TRANSLATE with a nested REPLACE (So REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(... REPLACE(M.Detail, '¬',' '),...),'/',' '),'?',' '), and find a string splitter (for example, Jeff Moden's DelimitedSplit8K).
USE Sandbox;
GO
CREATE TABLE [Messages] (Detail varchar(5000));
INSERT INTO [Messages]
VALUES ('Personally, I would strip out almost all the special characters, and then use a splitter on the space character. Of your permitted characters, only `''` is going to appear in a word; anything else is going to be grammatical. You haven''t posted what version of SQL you''re using, so I''ve going to use SQL Server 2017 syntax. If you don''t have the latest version, you''ll need to replace `TRANSLATE` with a nested `REPLACE` (So `REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(... REPLACE(M.Detail, ''¬'','' ''),...),''/'','' ''),''?'','' '')`, and find a string splitter (for example, Jeff Moden''s [DelimitedSplit8K](http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/)).'),
('As a note, this is going to perform **AWFULLY**. SQL Server is not designed for this type of work. I also imagine you''ll get some odd results and it''ll include numbers in there. Things like dates are going to get split out,, numbers like `9,000,000` would be treated as the words `9` and `000`, and hyperlinks will be separated.')
GO
WITH Replacements AS(
SELECT TRANSLATE(Detail, '`¬!"£$%^&*()-_=+[{]};:##~\|,<.>/?',' ') AS StrippedDetail
FROM [Messages] M)
SELECT SS.[value], COUNT(*) AS WordCount
FROM Replacements R
CROSS APPLY string_split(R.StrippedDetail,' ') SS
WHERE LEN(SS.[value]) > 0
GROUP BY SS.[value]
ORDER BY WordCount DESC;
GO
DROP TABLE [Messages];
As a note, this is going to perform AWFULLY. SQL Server is not designed for this type of work. I also imagine you'll get some odd results and it'll include numbers in there. Things like dates are going to get split out,, numbers like 9,000,000 would be treated as the words 9 and 000, and hyperlinks will be separated.
How would I take apart a column that contains string:
92873-987dsfkj80-2002-04-11
20392-208kj48384-2008-01-04
Data would look like this:
Filename Yes/No Key
Abidabo Yes 92873-987dsfkj80-2002-04-11
Bibiboo No 20392-208kj48384-2008-01-04
Want it to look like this:
Filename Yes/No Key
Abidabo Yes 92873-987dsfkj80-20020411
Bibiboo No 20392-208kj48384-20080104
whereby I would like to concat the dates in the end as 20020411 and 20080104. From the right side, the information is the same always. From the left it is not, otherwise I could have concatenated it. It is not an import issue.
As mentioned in the comments already, storing data like this is a bad idea. However, you can obtain the dates from those strings by using a RIGHT function like so:
SELECT RIGHT('20392-208kj48384-2008-01-04', 10)
Output:
2008-01-04
Depending on the SQLSERVER version you are using, you can use STRING_SPLIT which requieres COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL 130. You can also build your own User Defined Function to split the contents of a field and manipulate it as you need, you can find some useful examples of SPLIT functions in this thread:
Split function equivalent in T-SQL?
Assuming I'm correct and the date part is always on the right side of the string, you can simply use RIGHT and CAST to get the date (assuming, again, that the date is represented as yyyy-mm-dd):
SELECT CAST(RIGHT(YourColumn, 10) As Date)
FROM YourTable
However, Panagiotis is correct in his comment - You shouldn't store data like that. Each column in the database should hold only a single point of data, be it string, number or date.
Update following your comment and the updated question:
SELECT LEFT(YourColumn, LEN(YourColumn) - 10) + REPLACE(RIGHT(YourColumn, 10), '-', '')
FROM YourTable
will return the desired results.
I need to find invalid social security numbers in a varchar field in a SQL Server 2008 database table. (Valid SSNs are being defined by being in the format ###-##-#### - doesn't matter what the numbers are, as long as they are in that "3-digit dash 2-digit dash 4-digit" pattern.
I do have a working regex:
SELECT *
FROM mytable
WHERE ssn NOT LIKE '[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]'
That does find the invalid SSNs in the column, but I know (okay - I'm pretty sure) that there is a way to shorten that to indicate that the previous pattern can have x iterations.
I thought this would work:
'[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}'
But it doesn't.
Is there a shorter regex than the one above in the select, or not? Or perhaps there is, but T-SQL/SQL Server 2008 doesn't support it!?
If you plan to get a shorter variant of your LIKE expression, then the answer is no.
In T-SQL, you can only use the following wildcards in the pattern:
%
- Any string of zero or more characters.
WHERE title LIKE '%computer%' finds all book titles with the word computer anywhere in the book title.
_ (underscore)
Any single character.
WHERE au_fname LIKE '_ean' finds all four-letter first names that end with ean (Dean, Sean, and so on).
[ ]
Any single character within the specified range ([a-f]) or set ([abcdef]).
WHERE au_lname LIKE '[C-P]arsen' finds author last names ending with arsen and starting with any single character between C and P, for example Carsen, Larsen, Karsen, and so on. In range searches, the characters included in the range may vary depending on the sorting rules of the collation.
[^]
Any single character not within the specified range ([^a-f]) or set ([^abcdef]).
So, your LIKE statement is already the shortest possible expression. No limiting quantifiers can be used (those like {min,max}), not shorthand classes like \d.
If you were using MySQL, you could use a richer set of regex utilities, but it is not the case.
I suggest you to use another solution like this:
-- Use `REPLICATE` if you really want to use a number to repeat
Declare #rgx nvarchar(max) = REPLICATE('#', 3) + '-' +
REPLICATE('#', 2) + '-' +
REPLICATE('#', 4);
-- or use your simple format string
Declare #rgx nvarchar(max) = '###-##-####';
-- then use this to get your final `LIKE` string.
Set #rgx = REPLACE(#rgx, '#', '[0-9]');
And you can also use something like '_' for characters then replace it with [A-Z] and so on.
Dear Friends,
I've faced with a problem never thought of ever. My problem seems too simple but I can't find a solution to it.
I have a sql server database column that is of type NVarchar and is filled with standard persian characters. when I'm trying to run a very simple query on it which incorporates the LIKE operator, the resultset becomes empty although I know the query term is present in the table. Here is the very smiple example query which doesn't act corectly:
SELECT * FROM T_Contacts WHERE C_ContactName LIKE '%ف%'
ف is a persian character and the ContactName coulmn contains multiple entries which contain that character.
Please tell me how should I rewrite the expression or what change should I apply. Note that my database's collation is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.
Thank you very much
Also, if those values are stored as NVARCHAR (which I hope they are!!), you should always use the N'..' prefix for any string literals to make sure you don't get any unwanted conversions back to non-Unicode VARCHAR.
So you should be searching:
SELECT * FROM T_Contacts
WHERE C_ContactName COLLATE Persian_100_CI_AS LIKE N'%ف%'
Shouldn't it be:
SELECT * FROM T_Contacts WHERE C_ContactName LIKE N'%ف%'
ie, with the N in front of the comparing string, so it treats it like an nvarchar?