Another Seasonal Query, Slightly Late..
On the heels of Christmas Eve’s seasonal query from Dirk Gubbels comes this gem from Madhivanan (with a tip of the hat to Dave Edwards’ link in Log Buffer #129).
set nocount on
select space(7-len(replicate(char(42),no)))+ replicate(char(42),no*2-1) from
(
select top 5 row_number() over (order by name) as no from sysobjects
) as t
union all
select space(5)+replicate(char(124),3)
union all
select cast(0x4861707079204E65772059656172 as varchar(100))
This is safe to run on any database on any SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 instance.
Nice job, Madhivanan!
-wp