Building on Keith's solution:

WITHJRValues AS

(

SELECT LEFT(A_ID,6) AS A_ID

FROM A_TABLE

WHEREA_SOURCE = 'JR'

)

SELECTA_ID,

A_TR_DATE,

A_REF_NO,

CASE WHEN A_SOURCE = 'JR' THEN ISNULL(-a_debit,a_credit) ELSE NULL END AS 'JR',

CASE WHEN A_SOURCE = 'PJ'...

TV, I'd agree; however I've just been listening...

I thought I'd seen something similar. This was done as a readers' poll in The Register a few years ago. Here are the results: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/sci_fi_movie_poll/

s_streeting (3/4/2014)

---

1. The Elijah Bailey detective novels by Isaac Asimov.

2. Belgariad and Malorian.

3. The Dragons of Pern novels.

4. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - all 3 trilogies!

5. The...

We take the paranoia a stage further (financial institution :))- not just a Backout plan, but a Proven...

It really depends on how broadly you define "backup". Yes, normal SQL backups aren't supported, but you can backup your database, to give some protection against the data loss/corruption...

Yep - that's exactly why I got it wrong :crying:. I guess the correct answer...

The fact that all of the options were error conditions made it a bit easier. If one of the options had been "Query will return a list of objects",...

As well as the reference given, this one should be included too:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190309(v=sql.105).aspx

Interesting (although I can't imagine why it's been done that way).

It would have been nice if you had used one from the top of the list of options (maybe "uck")...

No worries, an easy one to miss. Thanks for replying.

Would it be possible to be a bit more careful with the content of articles? Our content filter bounced this newsletter, presumably because of the use of A**holes (but...

No - Ron did the main work; I just tidied up a bit - the credit is due to him.

Not sure what's going on there - it works a treat for me.

Here's the full script I'm using to test:

create table #tempad (os varchar(255))

insert #tempad values('Sys=Dell Inc.|OptiPlex 760;SN=554FSL5;OS=Ver:6.1.7601,SP:1,Type:1;Form=Desktop;')

insert #tempad values('Sys=Dell...

I'm sure there's a neater way, but this should work:

SELECT CHARINDEX('SN',os,1) AS 'Starting position'

,CHARINDEX(';',os,CHARINDEX('SN',os,1)) AS 'Ending position'

,SUBSTRING(os,CHARINDEX('SN',os,1)+ 3 ,CHARINDEX(';',os,CHARINDEX('SN',os,1))-CHARINDEX('SN',os,1)-3) FROM #TempAD