How to shorten long underlines from query results in sql server 2005

Question

Hi,

I am scheduling the a query to a table for each database in a particular instance. The query and table for each database are similar. I direct the query results to text file. Before the query results, I include the database where the particular query is being made. In my test in AdventureWorks, however, the result I got is a database name with very long underline.

Below is the output I got:

DatabaseName
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AdventureWorks                                                                                                                          

AttemptDate             
----------------------- 
2009-05-29 12:54:28.460

Below is the query I invoked:

set nocount on
use AdventureWorks
GO
select DB_NAME()as DatabaseName
select AttemptDate from dbo.ChangeAttempt

My question is: How do I shorten the lines below the database name?

Answer 1

What output would you get from this query?

set nocount on
use AdventureWorks
GO
select DB_NAME() as DatabaseName, AttemptDate from dbo.ChangeAttempt

Answer 2

use LEFT()

try this:

declare @mytabel table (longvalue  varchar(1000))

select longvalue from @mytabel

select left(longvalue,50) as longvalue from @mytabel

output:

longvalue
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(0 row(s) affected)

longvalue
--------------------------------------------------

(0 row(s) affected)

Answer 3

Try:

SELECT LEFT(DB_NAME(), 20) AS DatabaseName