In my report query I have a where clause that needs to be replaced dynamically based on the data chosen in the front end.
The query is something like :
where ?=?
I already have a code to replace the value - I created report parameter and linked to the value ? in the query.
Example:
where name=?
Any value of name that comes from front end replaces the ? in the where clause - this works fine.
But now I need to replace the entire clause (where ?=?). Should I create two parameters and link them to both the '?' ?
No, unfortunately most database engines do not allow to use a query parameter for handling a dynamic column name. This is for security considerations.
So you need to keep an arbitrary column name in the query:
where name=?
And then in "beforeOpen" script of the dataset replace 'name' with a report parameter value:
this.queryText=this.queryText.replace("name",params["myparameter"].value);
To prevent SQLIA i recommend to test the value of the parameter in this script. There are many ways to do this but a white list is the strongest test, for example:
var column=params["myparameter"].value;
if (column=="name" || column=="id" || column=="account" || column=="mycolumnname"){
this.queryText=this.queryText.replace("name",column);
}
In addition to Dominique's answer and your comment, then you'll just need a slightly more advanced logic.
For example, you could name your dynamic column-name-value pairs (column1, value1), (column2, value2) and so on. In the static text of the query, make sure to have bind variables for value1, value2 and so on (for example, with Oracle SQL, using the syntax
with params as (
select :value1 as value1,
:value2 as value2 ...
from dual
)
select ...
from params, my_table
where 1=1
and ... static conditions....
Then, in the beforeOpen script, append conditions to the query text in a loop as needed (the loop left as an exercise to the reader, and don't forget checking the column names for security reasons!):
this.queryText += " and " + column_name[i] + "= params.value" + i;
This way you can still use bind variables for the comparison values.
I have a problem that I have been hunting for a solution to, but to avail.
The basics are that I am trying to join 2 tables in Access by comparing a value in a field of Table 1 to a field in Table 2 that contains the number concatenated along with a few others in a list type format. (both fields are text type)
Example.
Table1.CWT value = 640242
Corresponding Table2.TAG_NO value I want to match to = 640242; 635894; 058426
So that it links the two tables based on the common value (640242 in this case).
So far, I have tried the following:
LEFT JOIN [Table2] ON [Table1].CWT like '*' & [Table2].TAG_NO & '*'
and
LEFT JOIN [Table2] ON [Table1].CWT & '*' like [Table2].TAG_NO
and what seems like every variation in between, I have even tried using % instead of *. But nothing works. In some cases, the value will be the second or third element in the string (635894 in above example), so I am looking for an option that will work in all cases. This is akin to looking for the equivalent of the CONTAINS function, but that does not seem to exist either.
Can anyone help me out?
Thanks
Ted
You need to switch the operands. And make sure that '640242' doesn't match '6402423', so add delimiters to both strings:
' ' & Table2.TAG_NO & ';' like '* ' & Table1.CWT & ';*'
You can use the Instr Function that tests if a string exists in other string as below:
Select [Table1].CWT, [Table1].OtherColumn, [Table2].Column1Needed,[Table2].Column2Needed
From [Table1], [Table2]
Where Instr([Table2].TAG_NO,[Table1].CWT)>0
See http://www.techonthenet.com/access/functions/string/instr.php
I'm trying to create a field (calculation result) in FileMaker Pro 13 that will return the number of times a specific value is selected in a specific field.
For Example:
Say you have Table 1. Table 1 only has 1 field named Field 1. Field 1 is a drop down list field with the options "A","B", & "C". The following data is from the records of Table 1 using the field, Field 1:
Record 1: Table 1::Field 1 = "A"
Record 2: Table 1::Field 1 = "A"
Record 3: Table 1::Field 1 = "B"
Record 4: Table 1::Field 1 = "C"
What I want is a counter that searches across the records for table one and finds how many times a certain option is selected. For example, I want to know how many times "A" was selected in Field 1 and it would return "2".
What I have tried to do so far is the following but it hasn't worked out so hot (returns "?"):
ExecuteSQL(
"SELECT Field 1
FROM Table 1
WHERE Field 1 = 'A'"
;"";"")
Any suggestions for a correct SQL script?
The correct version of your Execute
ExecuteSQL(
"SELECT Count(\"Field 1\")
FROM \"Table 1\"
WHERE \"Field 1\" = ?"
;"";"";"A")
When you use ExecuteSQL, you're passing a string into FileMaker's function and then behind the scenes FileMaker uses that string and the various other pieces you give it to perform the action.
If you have a space in your field or table name, e.g. Field 1, FileMaker thinks you mean "Select a field name Field and a field named 1. You need to quote the field name if it contains spaces or special characters, but you can't use just regular double quotes because that would end the string.
The way to fix it is what I did above; escape the double quotes around the field or table name.
Also, the ? and the "A" at the bottom allows you to pass data into the query, i.e. parameterizing the query. This means you could do a loop where each iteration of the loop you pass in a different value where I have "A". E.g. You could do this:
ExecuteSQL(
"SELECT Count(\"Field 1\")
FROM \"Table 1\"
WHERE \"Field 1\" = ?"
;"";""; Table 1::Search Field)
or
ExecuteSQL(
"SELECT Count(\"Field 1\")
FROM \"Table 1\"
WHERE \"Field 1\" = ?"
;"";"";$searchValue)
Be careful though, ExecuteSQL doesn't cache records that it pulls if you're in a server/client environment so this calculation could get pretty sluggish if you have a lot of records in the table, you're going over the wan, or both. I would suggest trying to get the count a different way.
Select count(*) from Table1 where Field1='A'
I have a report (built using SSRS) that uses a multi-value parameter.
I want to add a Filter onto my SQL Query WHERE FieldA is LIKE any of the values stored in the parameter.
So FieldA might have the following values:
BOBJAMESLOUISE
MARYBOB
JENNY
JOHNLOUISEJAMES
BOB
JENNYJAMESMIKE
And #ParamA might have the following values:
Bob, Louise
Therefore in this example only records 1, 3, 4 and 5 should be returned
Thanks to any help in advance :)
P.S I'm using SQL Server 2008
You will want to implement a function like the split function. This can take a comma separated value list and separate it into rows like you want.
Below is a link for a couple of different versions, any of them will work for you. It also tells you how to use it.
Split Function
I am guessing its not the spiting sting part that is the issue since just googling for SQL split string you can find a lot of example. In your case what you would want after the split string is something like this. Assuming that the split string function you end up using returns a table of values Here is what your comparison query for with field A would look like.
SELECT * FROM YourTableWithFieldA WHERE (#ParamA IS NULL OR EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM YourSplitFunctionThatReturnsATableOfValues(#ParamA) SplitTable WHERE (FieldA Like '%'+SplitTable.Value+'%')))
I'm a novice at SQL, so hopefully someone can spell this out for me. I tried following the "Replace Multiple Strings in SQL Query" posting, but I got stuck.
I'm trying to do the same thing as the originator of the above posting but with a different table and different fields. Let's say that the following field "ShiptoPlant" in table "BTST" has three records (my table actually has thousands of records)...
Table Name: BTST
---------------
| ShiptoPlant |
| ----------- |
| Plant #1 |
| Plant - 2 |
| Plant/3 |
---------------
Here's what I'm trying to type in the SQL screen:
SELECT CASE WHEN ShipToPlant IN ("#", "-", "/") Then ""
ELSE ShipToPlant END FROM BTST;
I keep getting the message (Error 3075)...
"Syntax error (missing operator) in query expression
'CASE WHEN ShiptoPlant IN (";","/"," ") Then "" ELSE ShipToPlant END'."
I want to do this operation for every character on the keyboard, with exception of "*" since it is a wildcard.
Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: Background Information added from the comments
I have collected line-item invoice-level data from each our 14 suppliers for the 2008 calendar year. I am trying to normalize the plant names that are given to us by our suppliers.
Each supplier can call a plant by a different name e.g.
Signode Service on our master list could be called by suppliers
Signode Service
Signode - Service.
SignodeSvc
SignodeService
I'm trying to strip non-alphanumeric chars so that I can try to identify the plant using our master listing by creating a series of links that look at the first 10 char, if no match, 8 char, 6, 4...
My basic hang-up is that I don't know how to strip the alphanumeric characters from the table. I'll be doing this operation on several columns, but I planned on creating separate queries to edit the other columns.
Perhaps I need to do a mass update query that strips all the alphanumerics. I'm still unclear on how to write it. Here's what I started out with to take out all the spaces. It worked great, but failed when I tried to nest the replace
UPDATE BTST SET ShipToPlant = replace(ShipToPlant," ","");
EDIT 2: Further Information taken from Comments
Every month, up to 100 new permutations of our plant names appear in our line item invoice data- this could represent thousands of invoice records. I'm trying to construct a quick and dirty way to assign a master_id of the definitive name to each plant name permutation. The best way I can see to do so is to look at the plant, address, city and state fields, but the problem with this is that these fields have various permutations as well, for example,
128 Brookview Drive
128 Brookview Lane
By taking out alphanumerics and doing
LEFT(PlantName,#chars) & _
LEFT(Address,#chars) & _
LEFT(City,#chars) & _
LEFT(State,#chars)
and by changing the number of characters until a match is found between the invoice data and the Master Plant Listing (both tables contain the Plant, Address, City and State fields), you can eventually find a match. Of course, when you start dwindling down the number of characters you are LEFTing, the accuracy becomes compromised. I've done this in excel and had decent yield. Can anyone recommend a better solution?
You may wish to consider a User Defined Function (UDF)
SELECT ShiptoPlant, CleanString([ShiptoPlant]) AS Clean
FROM Table
Function CleanString(strText)
Dim objRegEx As Object
Set objRegEx = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
objRegEx.IgnoreCase = True
objRegEx.Global = True
objRegEx.Pattern = "[^a-z0-9]"
CleanString = objRegEx.Replace(strText, "")
End Function
You could use the built in Replace function within Access
SELECT
Replace(Replace(Replace(ShipToPlant, "#", ""), "-", ""), "/", "") AS ShipToPlant
FROM
BTST
As others have said, within Access you can write your own functions in VBA and use them in your queries.
EDIT:
Here's a way to handle the nested Replace limit by wrappering the Replace function within our own function. It feels dirty but it works- put this in a module within Access
Public Function SuperReplace(ByRef field As String, ByVal ReplaceString As String) As String
' Size this as big as you need... it is zero-based by default'
Dim ReplaceArray(3) As String
'Fill each element with the character you need to replace'
ReplaceArray(0) = "#"
ReplaceArray(1) = "-"
ReplaceArray(2) = "/"
ReplaceArray(3) = " "
Dim i As Integer
For i = LBound(ReplaceArray) To UBound(ReplaceArray)
field = Replace(field, ReplaceArray(i), ReplaceString)
Next i
SuperReplace = field
End Function
Then test it with this query
SELECT
SuperReplace(ShipToPlant,"") AS ShipToPlant
FROM
BTST
You might want to take this an expand it so that you can pass in an array of strings instead of hard-coding them into the function.
EDIT 2:
In response to the additional information in the comments on the question, here's a suggestion for how you might want to handle the situation differently. The advantage to this apprach is that once you have mapped in a plant name permutation, you won't need to perform a string replace on future data in future years, only add new plant names and permutations to the map.
Start with creating another table, let's call it plant_map
CREATE TABLE plant_map (id AUTOINCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, master_id LONG)
into plant_map, add all of the permutations for plant names and insert the id for the name you wish to use to refer to a particular plant name permutation group with, into the master_id field. From your comments, I'll use Signode Service
INSERT INTO plant_map(name, master_id) VALUES ("Signode Service", 1);
INSERT INTO plant_map(name, master_id) VALUES ("Signode Svc", 1);
INSERT INTO plant_map(name, master_id) VALUES ("Signode - Service", 1);
INSERT INTO plant_map(name, master_id) VALUES ("Signode svc", 1);
INSERT INTO plant_map(name, master_id) VALUES ("SignodeService", 1);
Now when you query BTST table, you can get data for Signode Service using
SELECT
field1,
field2
FROM
BTST source
INNER JOIN
(
plant_map map1
INNER JOIN
plant_map map2
ON map1.master_id = map2.id
)
ON source.ShipToPlant = map1.name
WHERE
map2.name = "Signode Service"
Data within table BTST can remain unchanged.
Essentially, this is joining on the plant name in BTST to the name in plant_map then, using master_id, self joining on id within plant_map so that you need only pass in one "common" name. I would advise putting an index on each of the columns name and master_id in plant_map as both fields will be used in joins.
Don't think Access supports the CASE statement. Consider using iif:
iif ( condition, value_if_true, value_if_false )
For this case you can use the REPLACE function:
SELECT
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(yourfield, '#', ''), '-', ''), '/', '')
as FieldName
FROM
....
Create a public function in a Code module.
Public Function StripChars(ByVal pStringtoStrip As Variant, ByVal pCharsToKeep As String) As String
Dim sChar As String
Dim sTemp As String
Dim iCtr As Integer
sTemp = ""
For iCtr = 1 To Len(pStringtoStrip)
sChar = Mid(pStringtoStrip, iCtr, 1)
If InStr(pCharsToKeep, sChar) > 0 Then
sTemp = sTemp & sChar
End If
Next
StripChars = sTemp
End Function
Then in your query
SELECT
StripChars(ShipToPlant, "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789") AS ShipToPlantDisplay
FROM
BTST
Notes - this will be slow for lots of records - if you what this to be permanent then create an update query using the same function.
EDIT: to do an Update:
UPDATE BTST
SET ShipToPlant = StripChars(ShipToPlant, "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789")
OK, your question has changed, so the solution will too. Here are two ways to do it. The quick and dirty way will only partially solve your issue because it won't be able to account for the more odd permutations like missing spaces or misspelled words. The quick and dirty way:
Create a new table - let's call it
tChar.
Put a text field in it - the
char(s) you want to replace - we'll
call it char for this example
Put all the char or char combinatios that you want removed in this table.
Create and run the query below.
Note that it will only remove one
item at a time, but you can also put
different versions of the same
replacement in it too like ' -' or
'-'
For this example I created a table called tPlant with a field called ShipToPlant.
SELECT tPlant.ShipToPlant, Replace([ShipToPlant],
(SELECT top 1 char
FROM tChar
WHERE instr(ShipToPlant,char)<>0 ORDER BY len(char) Desc),""
) AS New
FROM tPlant;
The better (but much more complex) way. This explanation is going to be general because it would be next to impossible to put the whole thing in here. If you want to contact me directly use my user name at gmail.:
Create a table of Qualifiers -
mistakes that people enter like svc
instead of service. Here you would
enter every wierd permutation you
get.
Create a table with QualifierID and
Plant ID. Here you would say which
qualifier goes to which plant.
Create a query that joins the two
and your table with mistaken plant
names in it. Use instr so say what
is in the fields.
Create a second query that
aggragates the first. Count the
instr field and use it as a score.
The entry with the highest score is
the plant.
You will have to hand enter the ones
it can't find, but pretty soon that
will be next to none as you have
more and more entries in the table.
ughh
You have a couple different choices. In Access there is no CASE in sql, you need to use IIF. It's not quite as elegant as the solutions in the more robust db engines and needs to be nested for this instance, but it will get the job done for you.
SELECT
iif(instr(ShipToPlant,"#")<>0,"",
iif(instr(ShipToPlant,"-")<>0,"",
iif(instr(ShipToPlant,"/")<>0,"",ShipToPlant ))) AS FieldName
FROM BTST;
You could also do it using the sql to limit your data.
SELECT YourID, nz(aBTST.ShipToPlant,"") AS ShipToPlant
FROM BTST LEFT JOIN (
SELECT YourID, ShipToPlant
FROM BTST
WHERE ShipToPlant NOT IN("#", "-", "/")
) as aBTST ON BTST.YourID=aBTST.YourID
If you know VB you can also create your own functions and put them in the queries...but that is another post. :)
HTH
SELECT
IIF
(
Instr(1,ShipToPlant , "#") > 0
OR Instr(1,ShipToPlant , "/") > 0
OR Instr(1,ShipToPlant , "-") > 0, ""
, ShipToPlant
)
FROM BTST
All - I wound up nesting the REPLACE() function in two separate queries. Since there's upwards of 35 non-alphanumeric characters that I needed to replace and Access limits the complexity of the query to somewhere around 20 nested functions, I merely split it into two processes. Somewhat clunky, but it worked. Should have followed the KISS principle in this case. Thanks for your help!
I know this is a really old question, but I stumbled over it whilst looking for a solution to this problem, but ended up using a different approach.
The field that I wish to update is called 'Customers'. There are 20-odd accented characters in the 'CustName' field for which I wish to remove the diacritics - so (for example) ã > a.
For each of these characters I created a new table 'recodes' with 2 fields 'char' and 'recode'. 'char' contains the character I wish to remove, and 'recode' houses the replacement.
Then for the replace I did a full outer join inside the update statement
UPDATE Customers, Recodes SET Customers.CustName = Replace([CustName],[char],[recode]);
This has the same effect as nesting all of the replace statements, and is a lot easier to manage.
This query grabs the 3 first characters and replace them with Blanks
Example: BO-1234
Output: 1234
BO: IIf(IsNumeric(Left([sMessageDetails],3)),[sMessageDetails],Replace([sMessageDetails],Left([sMessageDetails],3),""))