All,

I'm in the midst of a project and trying to understand SQL at the same time.
Normally I could get a database up and operational in a relatively short
period of time, but in this case I'm running into a problem and need some
help.

Here's the situation. I've got about 300 lines of information that
originated in an Excel spreadsheet. One of the columns is actually a series
of hyperlinks to sites; however it's in the form of a HTML link. i.e.,
displayed as the site name or description rather than the actual URL (as you
might see it on a web page). This works fine in Excel and importing to
Access it works fine but not in SQL.

I'm assuming the data type is incorrect and I checked the documentation and
I see no reference to what type to use. In Access there is actually a
"Hyperlink" type which preserves the format.

Any assistance or guidance will be greatly appreciated.

SQL does not have any hyperlink type, as it does not present data to the
user, so there is no need really.
Why can you not just store this in a suitably sized nvarchar? Perhaps a
better way would be to store it in two fields, one for name and one for
link. You would have to use an ActiveX Script Transform to crack it, if
currently in a formatted html fragment using anchor .


--
Darren Green
http://www.sqldts.com
http://www.sqlis.com

"Wesley Peace" <WesleyPeace (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

My initial assumption was the data would be stored in the correct format in
a nvarchar data type. That was not the result of my initial import. I lost
all the links although the label was maintained.

I understand that SQL does not display the info the enduser, but I find it
interesting that obtaining the same effect that I can with Access and Excel
formatted data appears to be near impossible. Unfortunately your second
suggestion may not be possible.


"Darren Green" <darren.green (AT) reply-to-newsgroup-sqldts (DOT) com> wrote