Question

I have a column called Barname which contains a text name of all projects.

All the projects have a number before the name with a full stop between number and text.

e.g

1.Project name one
2.Project name two
20.Project name twenty
50.Project name fifty

I need to create a new column to allow me to sort on a numeric value so what I need is a command to take the numeric value from the name and ignore the full stop and the text.

So my new colum would have (based on above examples)

1
2
20
50

Answer 1

Use this expression (in SQL, not SSRS):

CAST(LEFT(MyColumn, CHARINDEX('.', MyColumn) - 1) AS int)

Edit, not all rows have dots

CASE
   WHEN CHARINDEX('.', MyColumn) > 0 THEN
             CAST(LEFT(MyColumn, CHARINDEX('.', MyColumn) - 1) AS int)
   -- ELSE nothing, just let it be NULL because we can't apply the require logic
END