Question

Okay so i found what was wrong, it was in the sql convert function. I was converting to varchar(30) when it was supposed to be nvarchar(30). To see the difference. What is the difference between varchar and nvarchar?

I guess this might be a silly question but i can’t seem to be able to remove some sort of space from a string returned by this function. I guess the first real question is why is this function returning a string like this “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9” when we’re saving to the database like this “1234789”. Second question is why something like this

Replace("1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9","\p{Zs}","")

or

Replace("1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"," ","")

Is not working, i have a feeling its because of the characters inbetween look like spaces but are not.

    Private Shared Function GetEncryptedPmtField(lhID As Integer, accountId As Integer, fieldName As String)
        Dim openKeyCmd = String.Format("OPEN SYMMETRIC KEY somekey DECRYPTION BY PASSWORD = '{0}'",     ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("Somethingsomething"))
        Const closeKeyCmd As String = "CLOSE SYMMETRIC KEY somekey"

        Dim command As New SqlCommand()
        command.Connection = New SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("Something").ConnectionString)
        command.CommandType = CommandType.Text
        command.CommandText = String.Format("{0} SELECT convert(varchar(30),decryptbykey({1})  FROM  paymentacct WHERE lh_id = @lhid AND id = @id ; {2}", openKeyCmd, fieldName, closeKeyCmd)
        command.Parameters.AddRange({New SqlParameter With {.ParameterName = "lhid", .Value = lhID}, New SqlParameter With {.ParameterName = "id", .Value = accountId}})
        command.Connection.Open()
        Dim baNum = command.ExecuteScalar().ToString()
        command.Connection.Close()
        Return baNum
    End Function

Answer 1

Thank you everyone for the help, here is the fix.
So, the issue was in the type I was converting the encrypted field to. I was using varchar instead of nvarchar.

  SELECT convert(varchar(30),decryptbykey(keyname) FROM  paymentacct

to

 SELECT convert(nvarchar(30),decryptbykey(keyname))  FROM  paymentacct

Note the varchar -> nvarchar change in the convert function