SQL select to get a string between two spaces

Question

I have a field with names in the format DOE JOHN HOWARD or DOE JOHN H.

I need a query to get the string between the two spaces (JOHN in this case).

The SO an

Answer 1

There is a somewhat sneaky way you could do this using PARSENAME.

It's intended purpose is to get particular parts of an object/namespace, however, in this case you could use it by replacing the strings with periods first.

E.g.,

SELECT PARSENAME(REPLACE('DOE JOHN HOWARD',' ','.'),2)