[dba-SQLServer] How good are you really?

John,

You should know by now that anything is possible.

Now, do you need someone to do it? :-)

Robert

At 12:00 PM 11/17/2005, you wrote:
>Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:49:46 -0500
>From: "John Colby" <jwcolby at ColbyConsulting.com>
>Subject: [dba-SQLServer] How good are you really?
>To: <dba-sqlserver at databaseadvisors.com>
>Message-ID: <035201c5eb96$eb65db70$667aa8c0 at ColbyM6805>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>
>The challenge:
>
>DotNetNuke stores it's user info in a denormalized field in a table in SQL
>Server.  One field has the definition of the data, for that record, at that
>instant:
>
>Website:S:0:0:TimeZone:S:0:4:PreferredLocale:S:4:5:Region:S:9:7:FirstName:S:
>16:6:PostalCode:S:22:5:Street:S:27:22:LastName:S:49:11:Unit:S:60:0:Telephone
>:S:60:12:Country:S:72:13:IM:S:85:0:Fax:S:85:0:City:S:85:8:Cell:S:93:12:
>
>With the data itself as follows:
>
>  -480en-USMontanaLouise82637918 Keller Dr. Box
>642Hammersmark307-436-9731United StatesGlenrock307-259-8423
>
>As you can see, the data is really a set of fields, with the field names
>embedded in the definition, then a start position within the data string,
>and the length of the data actually in the string.
>
>Is it possible to build a query or SP to pull the data out of the data
>field, using the formatting data and return a table of the data with field
>names and the data available?
>
>John W. Colby