title: SQL Select help - removing white space
body: <p>I'm running into a problem when trying to select records from my 2005 MS-SQL database (I'm still very new to SQL, but I learned and use the basic commands from w3schools already). In theory, all my manufacturer records should be unique. At least that is how I intended it to be when I did my first massive data dump into it. Unfortunately, that is not the case and now I need to fix it! Here is my scenario:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Table name = ItemCatalog
  Relevant columns = Partnumber,Manufacturer,Category
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I did a <code>SELECT DISTINCT Manufacturer FROM ItemCatalog</code> this little problem is what turned up:</p>
  
  <p>Cables2Go<br>
  CablesToGo<br>
  Cables To Go<br>
  CableToGo Inc<br>
  CablesToGo Inc<br></p>
  
  <p>All 5 of those showed up as distinct, which they are. Can't fault my SELECT statement for returning it, but from my human perspective they are all the same manufacturer! One method I see working is doing an UPDATE command and fixing all the permutations that show up, but I have a LOT of manufacturers and this would be very time consuming. </p>
  
  <p>Is there a way when I punch in a SELECT statement, that I can find all the likely permutations of a manufacturer name (or any field really)? I attempted the LIKE operator, so my statement would read</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT Manufacturer FROM ItemCatalog WHERE Manufacturer LIKE '%CablesToGo%'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but that didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Here's the nasty bit, my other program that I'm putting together absolutely requires that I only ask for a single manufacturer name, not all 5 variations. Maybe I'm talking in circles here, but is there is a simple way in one statement for me to find a similar string?</p>