I have a script that successfully encrypts a credit card. I need it to work as a trigger, so that any insert done to the creditcard column automatically encrypts it. Right now, my trigger works BUT the creditcard column is a varchar. When an app tries to insert, I do this:
DECLARE #encryptedCreditCardNumber varbinary(max)
SET #encryptedCreditCardNumber = EncryptByKey(Key_GUID('testKey'), #CreditCardNumber));
That works fine, but how do I then convert the varbinary(max) to a varchar (which is what the credit card column is). The creditcard column has been a varchar for a long time at my company and a lot of legacy code depends on it being a varchar.
Thank you
Your simplest approach is going to be to convert the binary to base64 and store that in the varchar column. Base64 is a method for rendering binary data using ascii encoding so that it could be represented in formats such as XML. You can perform the conversion by doing:
select cast(N'' as xml).value('xs:base64Binary(xs:hexBinary(sql:variable("#encryptedCreditCardNumber")))', 'varchar(max)');
This goes through an XML intermediary to correctly encode the varbinary to a varchar. To reverse the process on the DB use:
select cast(N'' as xml).value('xs:base64Binary(sql:variable("#base64stringvariable"))', 'varbinary(20)');
Edit: Useful reference - http://blogs.msdn.com/sqltips/archive/2008/06/30/converting-from-base64-to-varbinary-and-vice-versa.aspx
Related
I'm working on ssis package which exports data from SQL Server to Excel. I had a problem converting non-unicode to unicode string data types. So I created a derived Column task and converted to Unicode string [DT_WSTR] 4 columns which have a type Varchar(40) in SQL Server table. It worked with these columns. But I also have a Description column of type varchar(max) and I tried to convert it to Unicode text stream [DT_NTEXT]. It did not work.
If your source is SQL Server (as you said), you can convert it directly in your SQL Query
SELECT
CONVERT(NVARCHAR(40), 'att1')
,CONVERT(NTEXT, 'att2')
Convert your VARCHAR into NVARCHAR
Convert your TEXT into NTEXT
it's faster.
P.S. To test it (Do not forget to delete or reset your previous OLE DB Input component) -> It will be forced to reevaluate your datatype
Does it help you?
The only thing that worked was to cast a Description column in Stored Procedure as varchar(1000). I checked the max length of this field and it was about 300 characters. So I made it varchar(1000) and in Derived column Unicode string [DT_WSTR]. This was a workaround, but I still want to know how to make it in ssis package without converting data type in Stored Procedure.
I'm currently designing a MS SQL table for use in a project. The problem I'm currently facing is that the data types of "Transact SQL " are pointing to the deprecation of the types "text" and "ntext", which I always used for big texts.
Char, nchar, varchar and nvarchar may only be 8000 bytes big, this just isn't enough for a user input text, e. g. if he's writing a big article.
Is there any alternative to the obsolete data type text/ntext?
Using nvarchar(MAX) will allow you to store up to 2 GB of data. The same goes for varchar(MAX) too.
varchar(MAX) and nvarchar(MAX). Try 'em; you'll like 'em.
If you finished reading the paragraph on the MSDN page you linked, which explained that they were being removed, you would have found your answer:
ntext , text, and image data types will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL 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.
If you're using SQL 2005+, you could use n / varchar(max) instead. nvarchar will use unicode, and varchar will use ascii. If this is used to store blog text, then I would go with nvarchar(max)
I'm a rookie when it comes to XML data.
I currently have a database with xml data being stored in a ntext column and this database appears to be taking up too much space. I'm trying to improve the way the data is stored, to reduce the overall size of the DB.
The way I see it, I have two options:
nvarchar(max)
xml
I will need to test the two options above by importing some data into those columns.
The problem I am having is, the XML data in the ntext column is currently stored as utf-8. In order for me to import it into the XML data type column, I will need to CAST/CONVERT the data to UTF-16?
Is this right?
Storing you data as datatype XML has two major benefits:
since it's stored as a native XML, you can do things like XQuery on top of it
since it's stored as XML it's stored in an optimized (tokenized) way, taking up less space than what the equivalent nvarchar(max) column would use up.
To convert your existing NTEXT column: just do a CAST on it.
What results do you get frmo this:
SELECT
id, ntextColumn, CAST(ntextColumn AS XML)
FROM
dbo.YourTable
I am almost sure this will work - just like that. SQL Server doesn't support UTF-8 - so your data even in the ntext column is most likely not really stored as UTF-8 (it's already been converted to SQL Server's Unicode - UCS-2/UTF-16) so I don't see any issue with converting this to datatype XML, really.
There is a video file named ♥-You-Got-Me-♥[www.savevid.com].mp4. But as the file with this name is inserted into a SQL Server 2005 database the hearts change to ?.
So the name turns into ?-You-Got-Me-?[www.savevid.com].mp4.
I don't know how to change the character set of the database? How do I change the char set of my table so that it can over all the characters ?
It will be great if along with the command,graphical method to do so is included in the answer.
You don't need to change the character set of the database. As long as you are using the NVARCHAR type, you should be good on the database side. However, you have to make sure that however you get the data into the table takes Unicode into account:
DECLARE #VAR VARCHAR(100) = N'♥-You-Got-Me-♥[www.savevid.com].mp4'
, #NVAR NVARCHAR(100) = N'♥-You-Got-Me-♥[www.savevid.com].mp4'
, #oops NVARCHAR(100) = '♥-You-Got-Me-♥[www.savevid.com].mp4'
SELECT
#VAR
, #NVAR
, #oops;
Returns:
?-You-Got-Me-?[www.savevid.com].mp4 ♥-You-Got-Me-♥[www.savevid.com].mp4 ?-You-Got-Me-?[www.savevid.com].mp4
The last declaration omits the N in front of the literal. There are similar ways to mess this up in your front end. Even if the DB stores Unicode, you have to make sure that everything between input and the DB, and then back out to your UI, handles multi-byte characters properly.
It isn't a CHARSET problem but a datatype problem in SQL Server. SQL Server doesn't have CHARSET as such like MySQL and Collations are for code page, sorting and comparing
You need to use nvarchar to store unicode (basically non-latin) data properly.
The problem is likely using VARCHAR, if possible changing to a NVARCHAR type should resolve the problem for new entries. If you cannot change the column type it may get more complicated.
SQL Fiddle
Change the type of the field storing your filename from varchar to nvarchar.
For example:
Table:
FilenameId INT IDENTITY
Filename NVARCHAR(200)
SQL to insert data:
INSERT INTO TestTable ([Filename]) VALUES(N'♥-You-Got-Me-♥[www.savevid.com].mp4')
What I have is a staging table that is all nvarchar (so i can load it easily). In my live table i have a bunch of ntext items. I have the following:
obviously this isnt the whole query:
update
SLTDS_C69_Stdtable
set
[AARIssue] = convert(ntext, st.[AARIssue]),
[AttachmentIDs] = convert (ntext, st.[AttachmentIDs])
I get this error returned:
types ntext and nvarchar are incompatible in the equal to operator.
ANy idea how to fix this?
Do you want to replace the text or add to it?
INthe first case you don't need to convert at all, just set the filed to the value of the filed inthe other table. INthe second case you need to use UPDATE text.
However, you have a problem in that ntext is deprecated, you should consider converting these fields to nvarchar(max) as soon as possible unless you are still running SQL Server 2000.
Is this a repeat of this: How to update a text or ntext field in SQL Server 2000
The live table should use UPDATETEXT?