On Saturday, 8 December 2012 10:44:31 UTC, Tony Johansson  wrote:   
   > Hello!   
   >   
   > In a field in the database called Cid we have a format like year-35-X   
   > So in the database we can have numbers that can look like this.   
   >   
   >  2012-35-1   
   > 2012-35-2   
   > ...   
   > 2012-35-56   
   > 2012-35-0145   
   >   
   > If I want a select statement that return the largest number for X how can I   
   > write this ?   
   >   
   > So if we have 2012-35-0194 in the database field Cid I want to get back 195   
   >   
   > ?   
      
   It looks as though CAST(SUBSTRING(Cid, 9, 4) AS int) will extract   
   the number if the data is valid and always that length.   
      
   If the specification is "after the second/last hyphen" with variable   
   length then something more elaborate is needed, and, again, it   
   depends on whether the data is reliably of that format; some   
   simple designs will give either an error or a wrong answer if   
   the data doesn't conform.   
      
   Also, if you need to read that data, to generate a new key value,   
   this may be not a very good way to store it.  But sometimes you   
   don't have the option of using the best design.   
      
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