Question

I’ve created a function for retrieving the translations of database columns in MS SQL Server 2005, depending on the selected language code (e.g. ‘el-GR’). The function itself works correctly, but I am unable to use its result as the Alias for the retrieved columns.

This is the code I’m using:

SELECT
    tblAuditors.[Full Name] as dbo.GetLocalizedGridTranslation('Auditor Name', @languageCode)
FROM tblCompanyAuditors

Does anyone know how I can trick the SQL Server into allowing me to use the function as an Alias name?

Answer 1

Wrap the alias in brackets []:

SELECT 
   [dbo.GetLocalizedGridTranslation('Auditor Name', @languageCode)] = tblAuditors.[Full Name]
FROM tblAuditors

Apart from that, is it a typo that you’ve queried a table tblCompanyAuditors but the column is from table tblAuditors?

Edit: I’ve only just noticed that the column alias itself should be the result of a function.

Does that make sense? An alias is a column for all records, and a function will be executed on every record. If that’s a stored-procedure i would recommend to store the result in a variable and use that as column alias in dynamic sql.

DECLARE @column_alias VARCHAR(30)
SET @column_alias = dbo.GetLocalizedGridTranslation('Auditor Name', @languageCode);

-- Use dynamic SQL
DECLARE @sql VARCHAR(1000)
SET @sql = 'SELECT tblAuditors.[Full Name] AS ' + @column_alias + ' FROM tblAuditors'

EXEC sp_executesql @sql