Handy reminder: The PARSENAME() function can be useful for parsing small strings.  It returns parts 1-4 (working right to left) of a string, with each part delimited by periods.

For example:

PARSENAME('most.valuable.yak',3) returns “most”

PARSENAME('most.valuable.yak',1) returns “yak”

PARSENAME('most.valuable.yak',4) returns NULL

This can be handy when you need to parse an IP address, or very simple CSV strings.  Just REPLACE() the commas with periods and you are good to go.  Just remember you are working backwards.

This is a system function, designed to parse SQL Server 4-part names, so it only works with periods and strings with 4 parts.  But it can be useful!