Why not use the tally table technique? I...

@david.Andrews.

Not that this really helps but..

The MSDN entry for the TRY_CONVERT function (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230993(v=sql.110).aspx) has the remarks "TRY_CONVERT is a new keyword in compatibility level 110"...

Ah yes, that could be handy. LAG/LEAD would be useful too (access the previous/next records values) just a shame my company is still on SQL server 2008

Going to have to look into LAG/LEAD and CONCAT/FORMAT but from that list, I use APPLY a lot. If you tend be using loops a lot, look into tally tables,...

I couldn't find a solution to this, so I used a work around:

CREATE PROCEDURE [stp_testsymbol]

AS

SELECT 'This is the ' + CHAR(163) + ' symbol';

🙂