Question

Within a table in my database I have a table which holds IDs (Integers) for each customer.

Different customers come from different countries and i would like to prefix their ‘ID’ with two characters.

Say I had a customer with an ID of 12345.

How would I add the prefix ‘EN’ to that customer number?

I’m aware I can CAST() on a variable, however is this process the same for a field acquired through a query?

Answer 1

You would just concatenate the characters

SELECT 'EN' + Cast(id as varchar(10))
FROM yourTable

Then if you want to do an update:

UPDATE yourTable
SET yourfield = 'EN' + Cast(id as varchar(10))

If you have the list of countries in the table:

SELECT left(country, 2) + cast(id as varchar(10))
FROM yourTable

or

UPDATE yourTable
SET yourfield = left(country, 2) + Cast(id as varchar(10))

See SQL Fiddle with Demo