Stored Procedures in SQL 2005 - with field type NText
Im Writing a stored procedure to tidy up some data before importing it into Microsoft CRM.
So far all works fine.
However i need to do a case statement on a nText Field. It needs to check this field against about 3 or 4 text values and set a new field (already in the destination table) which is also an nText field.
However i am getting the error
"The data types ntext and varchar are incompatible in the equal to operator.
I have come across a few articles however their solutions all seem very complex.
Thanks for your help and advice in advanced.
I recommend, if at all possible, replacing the NTEXT type with NVARCHAR(MAX), since NTEXT is not a first class type and NVARCHAR is. This should be easy to do with an ALTER TABLE statement.
Most higher level code shouldn't care about the type change. Any procedural code that uses READTEXT, WRITETEXT, etc. to deal with the NTEXT columns can be simplified to just basic selects and updates.
If the type change is not possible you may have to wrap the comparisons and assignments with CAST() or CONVERT() operators, which is ugly.
NTEXT is deprecated in SQL Server 2005. You should use NVARCHAR(MAX) instead (NVARCHAR(MAX) can be used in CASE). Is it possible for you to change the type?
this works as well
CREATE TABLE #TEMP
(
MyDummy NTEXT
)
INSERT INTO #TEMP (MyDummy) Values ('test')
SELECT
CASE CAST(MyDummy AS NVARCHAR(MAX)) WHEN 'test' THEN 'ok' ELSE 'NOK' END MyTest
FROM #temp
drop table #temp
Related
I've got a front table that essentially matches our SSMS database table t_myTable. Some columns I'm having problems with are those with numeric data types in the db. They are set to allow null, but from the front end when the user deletes the numeric value and tries to send a blank value, it's not posting to the database. I suspect because this value is sent back as an empty string "" which does not translate to the null allowable data type.
Is there a trigger I can create to convert these empty strings into null on insert and update to the database? Or, perhaps a trigger would already happen too late in the process and I need to handle this on the front end or API portion instead?
We'll call my table t_myTable and the column myNumericColumn.
I could also be wrong and perhaps this 'empty string' issue is not the source of my problem. But I suspect that it is.
As #DaleBurrell noted, the proper place to handle data validation is in the application layer. You can wrap each of the potentially problematic values in a NULLIF function, which will convert the value to a NULL if an empty string is passed to it.
The syntax would be along these lines:
SELECT
...
,NULLIF(ColumnName, '') AS ColumnName
select nullif(Column1, '') from tablename
SQL Server doesn't allow to convert an empty string to the numeric data type. Hence the trigger is useless in this case, even INSTEAD OF one: SQL Server will check the conversion before inserting.
SELECT CAST('' AS numeric(18,2)) -- Error converting data type varchar to numeric
CREATE TABLE tab1 (col1 numeric(18,2) NULL);
INSERT INTO tab1 (col1) VALUES(''); -- Error converting data type varchar to numeric
As you didn't mention this error, the client should pass something other than ''. The problem can be found with SQL Profiler: you need to run it and see what exact SQL statement is executing to insert data into the table.
Is there a simple way of finding rows in an Oracle table where a specific NVARCHAR2 column has one or more characters which wouldn't fit into the standard ASCII range?
(I'm building a warehousing and data extraction process which takes the Oracle data, drags it into SQL Server -- UCS-2 NVARCHAR -- and then exports it to a UTF-8 XML file. I'm pretty sure I'm doing all the translation properly, but I'd like to find a bunch of real data to test with that's more likely to cause problems.)
Not sure how to tackle this in Oracle, but here is something I've done in MS-SQL to deal with the same issue...
create table #temp (id int, descr nvarchar(200))
insert into #temp values(1,'Now is a good time')
insert into #temp values(2,'So is yesterday')
insert into #temp values(2,'But not '+NCHAR(2012))
select *
from #temp
where CAST(descr as varchar(200)) <> descr
drop table #temp
Sparky's example for SQL Server was enough to lead me to a pretty simple Oracle solution, once I'd found the handy ASCIISTR() function.
SELECT
*
FROM
test_table
WHERE
test_column != ASCIISTR(test_column)
...seems to find any data outside the standard 7-bit ASCII range, and appears to work for NVARCHAR2 and VARCHAR2.
I ran these quires in my SQL server
select cast('<Answers>
<AnswerDescription> ϱπΩ÷√νƞµΔϒᵨλθ→%° </AnswerDescription>
</Answers>' as xml)
select ' ϱπΩ÷√νƞµΔϒᵨλθ→%°'
And got the following results
<Answers>
<AnswerDescription> ?pO÷v??µ??????%° </AnswerDescription>
</Answers>
and
" ?pO÷v??µ??????%°"
How to make my SQL server store or display these values as they are being sent from Application ?
In SQL Server, scalar string values are cast to VARCHAR by default.
Your example can be made to work by indicating that the strings should be treated as NVARCHAR by adding N before the opening single quote:
select cast(N'<Answers>
<AnswerDescription> ϱπΩ÷√νƞµΔϒᵨλθ→%° </AnswerDescription>
</Answers>' as xml)
select N' ϱπΩ÷√νƞµΔϒᵨλθ→%°'
If these strings are being incorrectly stored in the database, it is likely that they are being implicitly cast to VARCHAR at some point during insertion (e.g. INSERT). It's also possible that they are being stored correctly and are cast to VARCHAR on retrieval (e.g. SELECT).
If you add some code to the question showing how you're inserting data and the datatypes of the target tables, it should be possible to provide more detailed assistance.
I believe its problem with incorectly set character set,
change charecter set to UTF8.
I just tested it on my MySQL database, i changed character set to utf8-bin using
ALTER TABLE `tab1` CHANGE `test` `test` VARCHAR( 255 ) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL
worked without any problem
How do you add a string to a column in SQL Server?
UPDATE [myTable] SET [myText]=' '+[myText]
That doesn't work:
The data types varchar and text are incompatible in the add operator.
You would use concat on MySQL, but how do you do it on SQL Server?
like said before best would be to set datatype of the column to nvarchar(max), but if that's not possible you can do the following using cast or convert:
-- create a test table
create table test (
a text
)
-- insert test value
insert into test (a) values ('this is a text')
-- the following does not work !!!
update test set a = a + ' and a new text added'
-- but this way it works:
update test set a = cast ( a as nvarchar(max)) + cast (' and a new text added' as nvarchar(max) )
-- test result
select * from test
-- column a contains:
this is a text and a new text added
Stop using the TEXT data type in SQL Server!
It's been deprecated since the 2005 version. Use VARCHAR(MAX) instead, if you need more than 8000 characters.
The TEXT data type doesn't support the normal string functions, while VARCHAR(MAX) does - your statement would work just fine, if you'd be using just VARCHAR types.
The + (String Concatenation) does not work on SQL Server for the image, ntext, or text data types.
In fact, image, ntext, and text are all deprecated.
ntext, text, and image data types will
be removed in a future version of
MicrosoftSQL Server. Avoid using these
data types in new development work,
and plan to modify applications that
currently use them. Use nvarchar(max),
varchar(max), and varbinary(max)
instead.
That said if you are using an older version of SQL Server than you want to use UPDATETEXT to perform your concatenation. Which Colin Stasiuk gives a good example of in his blog post String Concatenation on a text column (SQL 2000 vs SQL 2005+).
UPDATE test SET a = CONCAT(a, "more text")
hmm, try doing CAST(' ' AS TEXT) + [myText]
Although, i am not completely sure how this will pan out.
I also suggest against using the Text datatype, use varchar instead.
If that doesn't work, try ' ' + CAST ([myText] AS VARCHAR(255))
To Join two string in SQL Query use function CONCAT(Express1,Express2,...)
Like....
SELECT CODE, CONCAT(Rtrim(FName), " " , TRrim(LName)) as Title FROM MyTable
I am trying to access a “text” type and inserting that value into another table viw a stored procedure. I’ve tried to cast it, convert it, but nothing works.
My code looks somethings like this:
Declare #Critique varchar(max), #Feedback varchar(max)
…
…
…
SELECT #Critique = CAST(comments as varchar(max)), #Feedback = CAST(public_critique as varchar(max)) FROM ASCO_vEXTERNAL_REVIEW_APPLICATIONS_LIST WHERE wf_task_assignment_id = #WfTaskAssignmentIDP1
– comments and public_critique are defined as text in view (also tried with table) ASCO_vEXTERNAL_REVIEW_APPLICATIONS_LIST
…
…
…
insert into WF_TASK_ASSIGNMENT_REVIEW (wf_task_assignment_review_id, wf_task_assignment_id, grantee_project_id, comments, public_critique) values (#NewID1, #WfTaskAssignmentIDP2, #GranteeProjectID, #Critique, #Feedback)
Can you please help me with this as soon as possible. I would really appreciate this.
Thanks,
Harish
I'm assuming that the WF_TASK_ASSIGNMENT_REVIEW is the one containing the text column you're trying to write into.
The text type is now deprecated in SQL 2005 and 2008. If at all possible try and upgrade the WF_TASK_ASSIGNMENT_REVIEW table to use the nvarchar(max) type instead.
If not, the only way is to use the WRITETEXT statement to write into the target column, in a loop (since WRITETEXT has an upper limit). See the WRITETEXT statement example in the SQL Server docs.
Your question is not sound good to understand .
Dont use text ,it wont support in many cases like where ,group by etc , so try use varchar
This is just an example
Declare #Critique varchar(max)
set #Critique = (select public_critique from ASCO_vEXTERNAL_REVIEW_APPLICATIONS_LIST
where convert(varchar(50), wf_task_assignment_id ) =#WfTaskAssignmentIDP1)