Question

Given a table-valued function such as dbo.Split() from ‘T-SQL: Opposite to string concatenation – how to split string into multiple records’, how do I pass multiple rows as arguments?

This works:

SELECT * FROM dbo.Split   (',', (SELECT myColumn FROM Stuff WHERE id = 22268)) WHERE ISNULL(s,'') <> '' 

It returns:

pn          s ----------- ----------- 1           22351 2           22354 3           22356 4           22357 5           22360 

But this does not:

SELECT * FROM dbo.Split   (',', (SELECT myColumn FROM Stuff)) WHERE ISNULL(s,'') <> '' 

Nor does this:

SELECT * FROM dbo.Split_temp(',', myColumn), Stuff 

The docs say:

When a user-defined function that returns a table is invoked in the FROM clause of a subquery, the function arguments cannot reference any columns from the outer query.

The sort of result set I’m looking for would look something like:

id          pn          s ----------- ----------- ----------- 22268       1           22351 22268       2           22354 22268       3           22356 22268       4           22357 22268       5           22360 24104       1           22353 24104       2           22355 24104       3           22356 24104       4           22358 24104       5           22360 24104       6           22362 24104       7           22364 . . . 

Is there any way at all (aside from, of course, a cursor) to accomplish this?

(edit)

As requested by MarlonRibunal, a sample table to produce the above result looks like:

id          myColumn ----------- ------------------------------------------- 22268       22351,22354,22356,22357,22360, 24104       22353,22355,22356,22358,22360,22362,22364, 

id is an int; myColumn is a varchar(max).

Answer 1

OUTER APPLY:

SELECT Stuff.id     ,Results.pn     ,Results.s FROM stackoverflow_454945 AS Stuff OUTER APPLY dbo.Split(',', Stuff.myColumn) AS Results WHERE ISNULL(Results.s,'') <> ''