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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-09T22:29:40+00:00

How do I write a SQL statement that would arrange a column of serial

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How do I write a SQL statement that would arrange a column of serial numbers so that they are in groups with a range of 1000 or less (based on their serial numbers)? The numbers are not currently sorted but would end up like the example below. There are only two numbers in the first example group (having a difference of 31). The third number has a difference of 6443 from the second number placing it in a separate grouping (>1000). The next 4 numbers are grouped based on their range of …4015 to …4865 (diff of 850).

I’m still a noob with < 6 months of TSQL. I don’t even know where to start with this one.

serial_num
----------  
33XG547909  
33XG547940  

33XG554383  

33XG564015 
33XG564282 
33XG564289  
33XG564308  
33XG564314  
33XG564353  
33XG564865  

33XG569023       

34LT242788  
34LT242812
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you’re looking to group items in a sliding scale where each item can be grouped with the thousand nearest items, you’ll have a lot of trouble since there would be so many combinations. They probably wouldn’t be helpful either unless you’re looking at a specific item and trying to find the thousand closest for just that one item.

    I think Astander has a good solution, but it doesn’t cover the starting portion of the serial. It looks like your solution is a simple as:

    SELECT  SerialNumber,
        LEFT(SerialNumber, LEN(SerialNumber) - 3) GroupNumber
FROM    YourTable
ORDER BY 2, 1

    With the results being

    SerialNumber GroupNumber
------------ -----------
33XG547909   33XG547
33XG547940   33XG547
33XG554383   33XG554
33XG564015   33XG564
33XG564282   33XG564
33XG564289   33XG564
33XG564308   33XG564
33XG564314   33XG564
33XG564353   33XG564
33XG564865   33XG564
33XG569023   33XG569
34LT242788   34LT242
34LT242812   34LT242
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