upper-transact-sql.md

title	UPPER (Transact-SQL)
description	UPPER (Transact-SQL)
author	MikeRayMSFT
ms.author	mikeray
ms.date	03/13/2017
ms.service	sql
ms.subservice	t-sql
ms.topic	reference
ms.custom	ignite-2025
f1_keywords	UPPER_TSQL UPPER
helpviewer_keywords	UPPER function characters [SQL Server], lowercase converting lowercase to uppercase uppercase characters [SQL Server] characters [SQL Server], uppercase lowercase characters
dev_langs	TSQL
monikerRange	>=aps-pdw-2016 || =azuresqldb-current || =azure-sqldw-latest || >=sql-server-2016 || >=sql-server-linux-2017 || =azuresqldb-mi-current || =fabric || =fabric-sqldb

UPPER (Transact-SQL)

[!INCLUDE sql-asdb-asdbmi-asa-pdw-fabricse-fabricdw-fabricsqldb]

Returns a character expression with lowercase character data converted to uppercase.

:::image type="icon" source="../../includes/media/topic-link-icon.svg" border="false"::: Transact-SQL syntax conventions

Syntax

UPPER ( character_expression )  

Arguments

character_expression
Is an expression of character data. character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column of either character or binary data.

character_expression must be of a data type that is implicitly convertible to varchar. Otherwise, use CAST to explicitly convert character_expression.

Return Types

varchar or nvarchar

Examples

The following example uses the UPPER and RTRIM functions to return the last name of people in the dbo.DimEmployee table so that it is in uppercase, trimmed, and concatenated with the first name.

-- Uses AdventureWorks  
  
SELECT UPPER(RTRIM(LastName)) + ', ' + FirstName AS Name  
FROM dbo.DimEmployee  
ORDER BY LastName;  

Here is a partial result set.

Name
------------------------------
ABBAS, Syed
ABERCROMBIE, Kim
ABOLROUS, Hazem

See Also

Data Types (Transact-SQL)
String Functions (Transact-SQL)
LOWER (Transact-SQL)