How to extract special characters from a field

Question

Hi there.
I am a novice when it comes to Web Intelligence reports. I have been tasked with producing a final report that I can export to Excel which shows a project number and a project name. Very simple. Ultimately I need to import my final Excel file to a third party software. However, the issue is the project name field consists of special characters such as hyphens, parenthesis, asterisks, etc. I need to be able to create a formula which extracts all special characters and just leaves me with alpha-numeric characters and spaces. I also need to limit the character count to no more than 34 characters. I will not be able to import my final Excel file unless I can product those results. With the help of a very knowledgable person in the Crystal Reports forum, I was able to do that by using the following formula:
stringvar a:=left({Projects.ProjectName},34);
numbervar i;
Local StringVar fin;
for i:= 1 to len(a) do
    if a[i]in ["a" to "z"] then
        fin := fin & a[i]
    else if a[i] in ["1" to "9"] then
        fin := fin & a[i]
else if a[i] = " " then
     fin := fin & a[i];
fin;
It worked amazingly well in Crystal Reports but this report now needs to move to Web Intelligence. Is there a way to do this in a Web Intelligence report? Itried but the formula is not recogizable. I tried creating a variable and using this formual but I couldn't get it to work.  I appreciate all helpful responses. The version of Web Intelligence I am using is SAP Business Enterprise XI. I am working in a PC environment using Windows 7 if that helps at all.
Thank you!
Lauren

Answer 1

Hi Lauren, Please provide with some sample data...
In SQL, by writing some Functions/Procedures you can eliminate special characters. Ask your database team to do that.
or
Create an object with the following syntax... It Works in SQL.
= REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE
(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE
(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE
(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE([String_Object],'&',' '),'*',' '),'(',' '),'^',' '),'%',' '),'!',' '),'@',' '),'#',' '),'$',' '),'~',' '),')',' '),'+',' '),'=',' ' ),'-',' '),'_',' '),'/',' '),':',' '),';',' '),',',' '),'<',' '),'.',' '),'>',' '),'?',' '),'"',' '),'''',' '),'[',' '),']',' '),'{',' '),'}',' '),'\',' '),'|',' ')
Example: Input: '~!@#$%^&*()_+{}:"<>-=[]./\|/*-+ascdfv123'
              Output: ascdfv123