<p>I'm looking for a way to transform a genuine string into it's hexadecimal value in SQL. I'm looking something that is Informix-friendly but I would obviously prefer something database-neutral </p>

<p>Here is the select I am using now:</p>

<pre><code>SELECT SomeStringColumn from SomeTable
</code></pre>

<p>Here is the select I would like to use: 
    SELECT hex( SomeStringColumn ) from SomeTable</p>

<p>Unfortunately nothing is that simple... Informix gives me that message: 
<em>Character to numeric conversion error</em></p>

<p>Any idea?</p>

Can you use Cast and the fn_varbintohexstr?
```
```
SELECT master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr(CAST(SomeStringColumn AS varbinary)) 
FROM SomeTable
```
```
I'm not sure if you have that function in your database system, it is in MS-SQL.
I just tried it in my SQL server MMC on one of my tables:
```
```
SELECT     master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr(CAST(Addr1 AS VARBINARY)) AS Expr1
FROM         Customer
```
```
This worked as expected. possibly what I know as master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr on MS-SQL, might be similar to informix hex() function, so possibly try:
```
```
SELECT     hex(CAST(Addr1 AS VARBINARY)) AS Expr1
FROM         Customer
```
```