Calculating the length of a string
It is important to know how to calculate the length of the strings stored in a database. You may need to calculate the product with the shortest name or the person with the longest email address.
Calculating the length of a string also proves to be useful in data cleansing and validation tasks. For example, if a business rule is that all product codes must have at least 6 characters, you can easily find the ones that are shorter.
In SQL Server, you can use the LEN() function for calculating the length of a string of characters.
You will use it in this exercise to calculate the location with the longest name from where cocoa beans are used (column broad_bean_origin, from the ratings table).
This exercise is part of the course
Functions for Manipulating Data in SQL Server
Exercise instructions
- Calculate the length of each
broad_bean_origin. - Order the results from the longest to shortest.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
SELECT TOP 10
company,
broad_bean_origin,
-- Calculate the length of the broad_bean_origin column
___ AS length
FROM ratings
--Order the results based on the new column, descending
ORDER BY ___;