sql-server-2000

I was writing a query against a table today on a SQL Server 2000 box, and while writing the query in Query Analyzer, to my surprise I noticed the word LineNo was converted to blue text. It appears to be a reserved word according to MSDN documentation, but I can find no information on it, just speculation that it might be a legacy reserved word that doesn't do anything. I have no problem escaping the field name, but I'm curious -- does anyone know what "LineNo" in T-SQL is actually used for? OK, this is completely undocumented, and I had to figure it out via trial and error, but it sets the

I have hit a classic problem of needing to do a string replace on a text field in an sql 2000 database. This could either be an update over a whole column or a single field I'm not fussy. I have found a few examples of how to use updatetext to achieve it but they tend to be in stored procedures, does anyone know of a similar thing that is wrapped into a function so I can use it like I would usually use Replace(). The problem with the Replace() function for anyone who isn't aware is that it doesn't support text fields. Edit: I realised I could probably get away with varchar(8000) so have

How does one detect whether a field is blank (not null) and then select another field if it is? What I really need is a IsBlank function that works the same as IsNull but with with blanks. REPLACE doesn't work with blanks, COALESCE only works with NULLS. How about combining COALESCE and NULLIF. SELECT COALESCE(NULLIF(SomeColumn,''), ReplacementColumn) FROM SomeTable You can use a CASE statement for this select Case WHEN Column1 = '' OR Column1 IS NULL OR LEN (TRIM (Column1)) = 0 THEN Column2 ELSE Column1 END as ColumnName from TableName EDIT: You can't use IF() in mssql. Use an IF statement in