I was tasked with moving an installation of Orchard CMS to a different server and domain. All the content (page content, menu structure, links, etc.) is stored in an MSSQL database. The good part: When moving the physical files of the Orchard installation to the new server, the database will stay the same, no need to migrate it. The bad thing: There are lots and lots of absolute URLs scattered all over the pages and menus.
I have isolated / pinned down the tables and fields in which the URLs occur, but I lack the (MS)SQL experience/knowledge to do a "search - replace". So I come here for help (I have tried exporting the tables to .sql files, doing a search-replace in a text editor, and then re-importing the .sql files to the database, but ran into several syntax errors... so i need to do this the "SQL way").
To give an example:
The table Common_BodyPartRecord has the field Text of type ntext that contains HTML content. I need to find every occurance of the partial string /oldserver.com/foo/ and replace it with /newserver.org/bar/. There can be multiple occurances of the pattern within the same table entry.
(In total I have 5 patterns that will need replacing, all partial string / substrings of urls, domains/paths, etc.)
I usually do frontend stuff and came to this assignment by chance. I have used MySQL back in the day I was playing around with PHP related stuff, but never got past eh basics of SQL - it would be helpful if you could keep your explainations more or less newbie-friendly.
The SQL server version is SQL Server 9.0.4053, I have access to the database via the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 12
Any help is highly appreciated!
You can't manipulate the NTEXT datatype directly, but you can CAST it to VARCHAR(MAX), then use the REPLACE function to perform the string replacement, then CAST it back to NTEXT. This can all be done in a single UPDATE statement.
update MyTable
set MyColmun = cast(replace(cast(MyColumn as nvarchar(max)), N'/oldserver.com/foo/', N'/newserver.org/bar/') as ntext)
where cast(MyColumn as nvarchar(max)) LIKE N'%/oldserver.com/foo/%'
The WHERE clause in the UPDATE statement below is used to prevent SQL Server from making non-changes, i.e. if the value does not need to be changed then there is no need to update it to itself.
The CAST function is used to change the data type of a value. NTEXT is a legacy data type used for storing large character values, NVARCHAR(MAX) is a new and more versatile data type for storing large character values. The REPLACE function can not operate on NTEXT values, hence the need to CAST it to NVARCHAR(MAX) first, do the replace, then CAST it back to NTEXT afterwards.
Related
I have a stored procedure which searches by text passed by a parameter. I noticed that if the text is not in English (i.e. Hebrew, Arabic), the query finishes without returning any rows. I am sure there is data to be found
I dont know which SQL server is being used : it is whatever is provided by GoDaddy on shared Windows hosting plan.
The thing is, I have a asp.net site which can search and fetch the data from this column encoded as UTF-8. The path which does not work is the MS SQL Management Studio. Even when I manually run same stored procedures which work from inside asp.net - they dont manage to find non English characters. The parameters I pass to the query are prefixed by N qualifier.
Try using the N character like the sample :
Select * from students where name like N'%بیژن%'
and as mentioned in the comment the column data type should be Nvarchar.
I have a predefined SQL data base that we have to work correctly with a reporting software we have purchased. When ever we pull a column of data with the reporting software we get system.indexoutofrangeexception error. On the first table we replaced all Semi Colons ';' with space within the data and this corrected the issue. This column does not have any other special characters within the data only semi colons.
However the data in the second column we need to query contains all different kinds of characters that are probably invalid. The column type is ntext and would like to either change the data directly in the sql database everytime there is a new entry or would changing the format to nvarchar(max) or nvarchar(1024) be suffice?
Thanks for the support I am beyond green at sql.
Your problem is most likely not related to the datatype in your database but the data itself.
Your reporting software seems to have specific requirements that your data does not meet.
Apologies for the rather basic question.
I have an error string that is built dynamically. The data in the string is passed by various third parties so I don't have any control, nor do I know the ultimate size of the string.
I have a transaction table that currently logs details and I want to include the string so that I can reference back to it if necessary.
2 questions:
How should I store it in the database?
Should I do anything else such as contrain the string in code?
I'm using Sql Server 2008 Web.
If you want to store non unicode text, you can use:
varchar(max) or nvarchar(max)
Maximum length is 2GB.
Other alternatives are:
binary or varbinary
Drawbacks: you can't search into these fields and index and order them
and the maximum size : 2GB.
There are TEXT and NTEXT, but they will be deprecated in the future,
so I don't suggest to use them.
They have the same drawbacks as binary.
So the best choice is one of varchar(max) or nvarchar(max).
You can use SQL Server nvarchar(MAX).
Check out this too.
Eventualy, you can enable and use a FILESTREAM feature of SQL Server 2008 (it's supported by WEB edition), and deal with extra large amount of data in sense of documents.
Of course, you need to be sure that you will use a benefit of this service.
I'm attempting to run a simple statement against an Access DB to find records.
Data validation in the records was horrible, and I cannot sanitize it. Meaning, it must be preserved as is.
I need to be able to search against a string with white space and hyphen characters removed. The following statement will work in Access 2010 direct:
select * from dummy where Replace(Replace([data1],' ',''),'-','') = 'ABCD1234';
Running it from an ODBC connection via PHP will not. It produces the following error:
SQL error: [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Undefined function 'Replace' in expression., SQL state 37000 in SQLExecDirect
Creating a query in the database that runs the function and attempting to search its values indirectly causes the same error:
select * from dummy_indirect where Expr1 = 'ABCD1234';
I've attempted to use both ODBC drivers present. ODBCJR32.dll (03/22/2010) and ACEODBC.dll (02/18/2007). To my knowledge these should be current as it was installed with the full Access 2010 and Access 2010 Database Engine.
Any ideas on how to work around this error and achieve the same effect are welcome. Please note, that I cannot alter the database in way, shape, or form. That indirect query was created in another mdb file that has the original tables linked from the original DB.
* Update *
OleDB did not really affect anything.
$dsn= "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=c:\dummy.mdb;";
I'm not attempting to use it as a web backend either. I'm not a sadomasochist.
There is a legacy system that I must support that does use Access as a backend. Data gets populated there from other old systems that I must integrate into more modern systems. Hence, the creation of an API with Apache/PHP that is running on the server supporting the legacy system.
I need to be able to search a table that has an alphanumeric case identifier to get a numeric identifier that is unique and tied to a generator (Autonumber in access). Users have been using it a trash box for years (inconsistent data entry with sporadic notations) so the only solution I have is to strip everything except alphanumeric out of both the field value and the search value and attempt to perform a LIKE comparison against it.
If not replace() which is access supported, what ODBC compatible functions exist that I can use do the same kind of comparison?
Just to recap, the Access db engine will not recognize the Replace() function unless your query is run from within an Access application session. Any attempt from outside Access will trigger that "Undefined function" error message. You can't avoid the error by switching from ODBC to OleDb as the connection method. And you also can't trick the engine into using Replace() by hiding it in separate query (in the same or another Access db) and using that query as the data source for your main query.
This behavior is determined by Access' sandbox mode. That linked page includes a list of functions which are available in the default sandbox mode. That page also describes how you can alter the sandbox mode. If you absolutely must have Replace() available for your query, perhaps the lowest setting (0) would allow it. However, I'm not recommending you do that. I've never done it myself, so don't know anything about the consequences.
As for alternatives for Replace(), it would help to know about the variability in the values you're searching. If the space or dash characters appear in only one or a few consistent positions, you could do a pattern match with a Like expression. For example, if the search field values consist of 4 letters, an optional space or dash, followed by 4 digits, a WHERE clause like this should work for the variations of "ABCD1234":
SELECT * FROM dummy
WHERE
data1 = 'ABCD1234'
OR data1 Like 'ABCD[- ]1234';
Another possibility is to compare against a list of values:
SELECT * FROM dummy
WHERE
data1 IN ('ABCD1234','ABCD 1234','ABCD-1234');
However if your search field values can include any number of spaces or dashes at any position within the string, that approach is no good. And I would look real hard for some way to make the query task easier:
You can't clean the stored values because you're prohibited from altering the original Access db in any way. Perhaps you could create a new Access db, import the data, and clean that instead.
Set up the original Access db as a linked server in SQL Server and build your query to take advantage of SQL Server features.
Surrender. :-( Pull in a larger data set to your PHP client code, and evaluate which rows to use vs. which to ignore.
I'm not sure you can do this with ODBC and your constraints. The MS Access driver is limited (by design; MS wants you to use SQL Server for back ends).
Can you use OLEDB? that might be an option.
I am building a simple search tool to search through 'n' articles of html content. I have tried the fulltext search option and all was well until we went live and I have had a load of trouble with the webhost getting stuff sorted properly.
So I might have to move to a host that does not have SQL fulltext support.
All of the articles are stored in a SQL 'image' column, all I want to do is run a LIKE'%keyword%' search on this column, but have no idea how to do this or if it is even possible.
Can SQLserver decode the binary and do a search on the fly?
Or will I be better off just storing a text only version of the content in a second column?
I have looked at the Lucene.net project but am not sure if this will work on a shared hosting platform.
any help will much appreciated.
cheers.
craig
It depends on your version of SQL server - in 2000, you're probably out of luck. "Image" really is just a binary blob - no string functions or anything will work on it.
In SQL Server 2005, you could possibly convert this (either in the database schema or on the fly, with a CAST) to VARCHAR(MAX) - a text type up to 2 GB, which can deal with the normal string functions, and can be searched using WHERE CAST(blob AS VARCHAR(MAX)) LIKE '.......'
It won't be exactly lightning swift - but it might work. I would prefer changing the datatype of that column to VARCHAR(Max), though - all just text, up to 2 GB supported - should be good enough for a few HTML documents.
Marc