How do I do a simple 'Find and Replace" in MsSQL?

Question is pretty self explanitory. I want to do a simple find and replace, like you would in a text editor on the data in a column of my database (which is MsSQL on MS Windows server 2003)

Solution 1:

The following query replace each and every a character with a b character.

UPDATE 
    YourTable
SET 
    Column1 = REPLACE(Column1,'a','b')
WHERE 
    Column1 LIKE '%a%'

This will not work on SQL server 2003.

Solution 2:

like so:

BEGIN TRANSACTION; 
UPDATE table_name
  SET column_name=REPLACE(column_name,'text_to_find','replace_with_this'); 
COMMIT TRANSACTION;

Example: Replaces <script... with <a ... to eliminate javascript vulnerabilities

BEGIN TRANSACTION; UPDATE testdb
SET title=REPLACE(title,'script','a'); COMMIT TRANSACTION;