How do I get the count of particular characters in ntext datatype using SQL

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I have a column of nText data type and having the values with in and out characters respectively. Need to get the count of in's and out's.
Example: 1st row contains 9:00:in(A111),11:00:out(A111),.......
And 2nd row so on....

What I have tried:

Tried with Casting (to nvarchar).

Posted 31-Oct-20 20:26pm

Shreevidya S.R

Updated 7-Nov-20 22:14pm

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Richard Deeming 2-Nov-20 9:32am

ntext, text, and image (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Docs[^]
IMPORTANT! ntext, text, and image data types will be removed in a future version of SQL Server. Avoid using these data types in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use them. Use nvarchar(max), varchar(max), and varbinary(max) instead.

These types have been deprecated since 2005. How old is the application you're working on?!

Jörgen Andersson 3-Nov-20 2:56am

What database and version is it?

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CHill60 · Answer 1 · 2020-11-07T22:15:00

That is a very poor design. Each in/out should be a separate row with a separate column for the date.

However, to answer your question..
Calculate the LENGTH of the data, and the length of the data after REPLACE 'in' with ''. Subtract one from the other, then adjust for the number of chars you replaced.

E.g. Data is '09:00:in(A111),11:00:out(A111),12:00:in(A111),13:00:out(A111)'
Length of data is 61
Replace 'in' gives '09:00:(A111),11:00:out(A111),12:00:(A111),13:00:out(A111)'
Length of that is 57
61 - 57 = 4
We replaced 2 chars so divide by 2 = 2 = the number of times 'in' was in the original data
For 'out' we get 61 - 55 = 6
Divide by 3 (length of 'out') to get the 2 times 'out' appeared in the original data

Edit: if you insist on keeping the ntext column type (don't - use DDL to change the column type, don't try to 'cast' it) you will need the 'datalength' function not the len() function.