I am constructing a document number. It has several codes such as '05' of r fiscal year, and 'AB' for type, etc. It also has a two character counter imbedded in it, and it is space constrained (i.e. I am not able to expand the counter to three digits.) There needs to be room for 200 + items in any given set of numbers. Hexadecimal would take care of this, but I am not able to convert back and forth from binary to char. Currently there is a manual method that uses a table of alpha counters (AA, AB, AC, ... ZZ).

Does that help?


>I still don't understand why you're using binary instead of smallint or tinyint.
>
>>I need the right 2 characters from the data 00 - ff. I do not know how to get that from the number. It is being used as a counting mechanism. I have 200 + items that need to be counted in a two char space. This is the way I thought would work the best. Otherwise I will need to make a table with a list in it and use that. (unless a better suggestion is made).
>>
>>>Would converting to a number work for you?

SELECT CAST(@hex AS int)

>>>