Please read the form rules before you post. You fail to give us any DDL, not even the name of the table!
CREATE TABLE Wacko
(star_string VARCHAR (50) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
CHECK (star_string LIKE '[*a-z][*a-z][*a-z][*a-z][*a-z]..[*a-z]'));
Instead of trying to repair this weird data after the fact, why do not you make sure that you have always got at least 10 stars each time you do an insertion?
CHECK (LEN(start_string) - LEN(REPLACE (star_string, '*', '')) = 10)
CREATE TABLE Wacko
(star_string VARCHAR (50) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
CHECK (star_string LIKE '[*a-z][*a-z][*a-z][*a-z][*a-z]..[*a-z]'));
Instead of trying to repair this weird data after the fact, why do not you make sure that you have always got at least 10 stars each time you do an insertion?
CHECK (LEN(start_string) - LEN(REPLACE (star_string, '*', '')) = 10)
--CELKO-- Books in Celko Series for Morgan-Kaufmann Publishing: Analytics and OLAP in SQL / Data and Databases: Concepts in Practice Data / Measurements and Standards in SQL SQL for Smarties / SQL Programming Style / SQL Puzzles and Answers / Thinking in Sets / Trees and Hierarchies in SQL