Initially there are two problems with your conversion:
It's the wrong "type" of conversion. You are converting a string into a hex / binary representation of the characters them selves. For example, a "26" will become 0x3236 in hex as 0x32 is the same as doing
CHAR(0x32)
and 0x36 is the same asCHAR(0x36)
, or it can be referred to as the ASCII value of the number "2". What you want is to simply change the form of the string "26" (which represents a byte) into0x26
. And for that you need to use a style number of "2" for theCONVERT
function. For example:SELECT CONVERT(VARBINARY(2), '26'), CONVERT(VARBINARY(2), '26', 2); -- 0x3236 0x26
This is why you are getting 0x323630303A383830303A366130363A32
from 2600:8800:6a06:2000:1d29:3b7:8c7c:271b
. You are really only getting the first 16 characters from that string, which are: 2600:8800:6a06:2
. The two characters on the left I explained directly above. The 3 characters on the right, 6:2
are the 0x363A32
on the right side of the hex value, since 0x36
= "6", 0x3A
= ":", and 0x32
= "2".
- You will need to get rid of the colons as they are not valid binary digits. But the colons are there as delimiters for a reason: there are 8 segments, and if leading "0"s are removed, which is valid to do, then 0 really needs to be
0x0000
, not0x00
or0x0
. So, you need to ensure that each segment comes back as 4 hex digits.
You can accomplish all of this by:
- splitting on the colons
- left-padding with "0"s
- converting to
BINARY(2)
- concatenating those pieces together
If you are using SQL Server 2016 or newer, you can probably use the built-in STRING_SPLIT
function. Or, if you are using a version prior to SQL Server 2016, you can either use whatever splitter you already have, or you can use the free version of my SQL# SQLCLR library (there are several string splitters in the Free version).
For example:
SELECT RIGHT('0000' + prt.[SplitVal], 4) AS [string],
CONVERT(BINARY(2), RIGHT('0000' + prt.[SplitVal], 4), 2) AS [hex]
FROM SQL#.String_Split4k('2600:100:400:0:0:0:0:0', ':', 1) prt;
returns:
string hex
2600 0x2600
0100 0x0100
0400 0x0400
0000 0x0000
0000 0x0000
0000 0x0000
0000 0x0000
0000 0x0000
That was just a way to see what the pieces are. To put them together into a single hex value, you can do the following:
DECLARE @IPv6 VARBINARY(16) = 0x;
SELECT @IPv6 += CONVERT(BINARY(2), RIGHT('0000' + prt.[SplitVal], 4), 2)
FROM SQL#.String_Split4k('2600:100:400:0:0:0:0:0', ':', 1) prt;
SELECT @IPv6;
-- 0x26000100040000000000000000000000
You can create a function to handle this conversion. You can then store these VARBINARY(16)
values and create an index on them, and then convert the string coming in and store that in a variable to use in the query.
Here is that same approach, but using the built-in STRING_SPLIT
function:
DECLARE @IPv6 VARBINARY(16) = 0x;
SELECT @IPv6 += CONVERT(BINARY(2), RIGHT('0000' + prt.[value], 4), 2)
FROM STRING_SPLIT('2600:100:400:0:0:0:0:0', ':') prt;
SELECT @IPv6;
-- 0x26000100040000000000000000000000
Just keep in mind that some folks are hesitant to use STRING_SPLIT
in this type of situation because here the order that the split parts are returned is important as it can change the value if they came back in a different order, and the built-in function doesn't return a row number. I personally don't see how the returned values could come back out of order, but that is just an educated guess and not a guarantee. If you want a guarantee, then don't use the STRING_SPLIT
built-in function.