Question

Consider the a table that contains

ReturnValueID | ReturnValue   TriggerValue
------------------------------------------
      1       | returnValue1 | testvalue
      2       | returnValue2 | testing...
      3       | returnValue3 | value3

And given a string: HERE IS THE TEXT testing... AND MORE TEXT testvalue MORE TEXT

I have written a CTE using SQL Server 2008 that uses a FindInString() function I wrote to indicate where the matched text is found. 0 = not found:

1 | returnValue1 | 43
2 | returnValue2 | 18
3 | returnValue3 | 0

What I need to do now, is iterate through this result set in a loop where I will perform some additional logic based on each row.

I have seen a few examples of looping, but I would rather not use a cursor.

What is the best way to approach this?

Thanks.

— UPDATE —

Once a match is made, the ID of the matched row is added to a table, if it doesn’t already exist, then the return value is appended to an VARCHAR value, if it doesn’t already exist in the dynamic string:

IF NOT EXISTS   -- check if this value is already recorded
(
    SELECT *
    FROM RecordedReturnValue
    WHERE ReturnValueID  = @ReturnValueID 
)
BEGIN
    -- add the visitor/external tag ID to historical table
    INSERT INTO RecordedReturnValue (...)
    VALUES (...)

    -- function checks if string is already present
    SET @DynamicString = dbo.AppendDynamicOutput(@ReturnValue, @DynamicString)
END

This must be performed for each matched TriggerValue from the CTE.

Answer 1

Ended up using a CTE, added the values to a temp table, then iterated through the results and performed some logic.