Convert column data from Binary to String with SQL Server 2005

I had this binary column in SQL Server 2005 which was storing the MD5 hashes of certain files. The requirement was to display these hashes in a ASP.NET web UI. So i set about the task of converting the same. Binary data as such cannot be displayed on the UI. It needs to be converted to String. So you could go ahead and read byte by byte and convert it into a string, concatenating it as you go along. To facilitate things, SQL Server comes built in with a function that could convert common data types to string. It is called:

sys.fn_sqlvarbasetostr

The above function will in turn call

sys.fn_varbintohexsubstring

in our case because we are trying to convert binary to string. To use the function in a select query just do so:

SELECT sys.fn_sqlvarbasetostr(MD5Hash) From HashTable

where MD5Hash is the binary column you would like to convert.