How do I calculate a good hash code for a list of strings?

Question

Background:

• I have a short list of strings.
• The number of strings is not always the same, but are nearly always of the order of a “handful”
• I

Answer 1

A SQL-based solution could be based on the checksum and checksum_agg functions. If I'm following it right, you have something like:

MyTable
  MyTableId
  HashCode

MyChildTable
  MyTableId  (foreign key into MyTable)
  String

with the various strings for a given item (MyTableId) stored in MyChildTable. To calculate and store a checksum reflecting these (never-to-be-changed) strings, something like this should work:

UPDATE MyTable
 set HashCode = checksum_agg(checksum(string))
 from MyTable mt
  inner join MyChildTable ct
   on ct.MyTableId = mt.MyTableId
 where mt.MyTableId = @OnlyForThisOne

I believe this is order-independant, so strings "The quick brown" would produce the same checksum as "brown The quick".