Selecting Persons Name beginning on the right - tsql

Question

I know how to do a left, right and substring in T-SQL, but I'm having difficulty extracting just the name of the person below since the length of the name are not the same. Any ideas or syntax that I can use to extract just the name? Thanks
Data Value:
581;#Jackson, Daniel H; 501;#Sims, Katy L; 606;#Lawrence, Jennifer O

Answer 1

You can get the length of the name dynamically using PATINDEX, but it assumes that the Names are ALWAYS formatted the same way.
Here is an example of a TSQL Select that will give select the first names from the data you supplied:
CREATE TABLE #Temp (
ID INT NOT NULL,
FullName VARCHAR(100)
)
INSERT #Temp VALUES (581, 'Jackson, Daniel H')
INSERT #Temp VALUES (606, 'Lawrence, Jennifer O')
SELECT ID, FullName , SUBSTRING(FullName, PATINDEX('%, % _', FullName) + 2,
PATINDEX('% _', FullName) - PATINDEX('%, %', FullName) - 2) FirstName
FROM #Temp
DROP TABLE #Temp

Answer 2

I use a function to split up CSV-Strings:
create function Do_Split
(#InputString NVARCHAR(4000)
,#Delimiter NVARCHAR(50) = ';')
RETURNS #Items TABLE (Item NVARCHAR(4000)) AS
BEGIN --Function
IF (#Delimiter = ' ')
BEGIN
SET #Delimiter = ';'
SET #InputString = REPLACE(#InputString, ' ', #Delimiter)
END;
IF (#Delimiter IS NULL OR #Delimiter = '') SET #Delimiter = ';';
DECLARE #Item NVARCHAR(4000)
DECLARE #ItemList NVARCHAR(4000)
DECLARE #DelimIndex INT
SET #ItemList = #InputString;
SET #DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(#Delimiter, #ItemList, 0);
WHILE (#DelimIndex != 0)
BEGIN
SET #Item = SUBSTRING(#ItemList, 0, #DelimIndex);
INSERT INTO #Items VALUES (#Item);
-- Set #ItemList = #ItemList minus one less item
SET #ItemList = SUBSTRING(#ItemList, #DelimIndex+1, LEN(#ItemList)-#DelimIndex);
SET #DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(#Delimiter, #ItemList, 0);
END; -- End WHILE
IF #Item IS NOT NULL -- At least one delimiter was encountered in #InputString
BEGIN
SET #Item = #ItemList;
INSERT INTO #Items VALUES (#Item);
END;
ELSE -- No delimiters were encountered in #InputString, so just return #InputString
BEGIN
INSERT INTO #Items VALUES (#InputString);
END;
RETURN
END -- End Function
go
Usage:
SELECT * FROM Do_Split('581;#Jackson, Daniel H; 501;#Sims, Katy L; 606;#Lawrence, Jennifer O',';');
Result:
581
#Jackson, Daniel H
501
#Sims, Katy L
606
#Lawrence, Jennifer O

Answer 3

It isn't clear how your data looks like, because your example concatenates multiple values in one row.
Case 1
Assume that there're 2 columns id and full_name in your_table. The semicolon ; was added by you intentionally to distinguish columns. In this case, you can obtain the value of full name using the function RIGHT. The length would be the length of full_name minus 1 which excludes the #.
--
-- id full_name
-- -- ---------
-- 581 #Jackson, Daniel H
-- 501 #Sims, Katy L
-- 606 #Lawrence, Jennifer O
--
SELECT RIGHT(full_name, LEN(full_name) - 1) AS full_name
FROM your_table;
Case 2
If the above solution is not suitable, let's discuss another case. Assume that there's 1 column content in your_table and 3 rows. The semicolon ; was inside the value of content and need to be treated explicitly. In this case, you can obtain the value of full name using the function SUBSTRING. The full name will begin after just after the index of char # and this index can be obtained using CHARINDEX (Transact-SQL):
--
-- content
-- -------
-- 581;#Jackson, Daniel H
-- 501;#Sims, Katy L
-- 606;#Lawrence, Jennifer O
--
SELECT SUBSTRING(content, CHARINDEX('#', content) + 1, 1000) AS full_name
FROM your_table;