Searching a string for the third (or more) occurrence of a value

[SilentDeb]

Hello,

We've got a bit of a problem where we're trying to split apart portions of a string and use that portion to populate another field in a table.

This is our CM software, and it contains problem types that might be along the line of 'SW-Server-SQL Server 2000-Backups-Not Working'. Workflow already exists in the application that uses SQL Server that'll split out the 'SQL Server 2000' part and place it into a 'Category 3' field, 'Backups' into 'Category 4', and so forth as a new record is created, but we've got something like 130,000 existing records that we need to update, and we can't begin to figure out how.

Each 'categoryX' chunk is separated by a dash, but the category itself could be of any length.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

 

[mrdenny]

Look up charindex and substring on the forums on in BOL. They are the functions you'll be needing.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

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