Question

I have a large number of rows in an SQL Server 2008 db

For each row I have 3 columns that I care about

A typical row looks like this:

AccountNumber    | basecode                      | subcode
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
9689787209368901 | AQTXG AQTXG AQTXG AQTXG ACC5Z | ZQ596 ZQ596 ZQ596 ZQ655 ZC655

I need an SQL query that turns it into the following:

AccountNumber      |    basecode| subcode
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
9689787209368901   |    AQTXG   | ZQ596
9689787209368901   |    AQTXG   | ZQ596
9689787209368901   |    AQTXG   | ZQ596
9689787209368901   |    AQTXG   | ZQ655
9689787209368901   |    ACC5Z   | ZC655

Answer 1

Since you are using SQL Server, you can use a recursive query to split the data. IN this query, you can have an unknown number of items that are split with the space (' '), if your delimiter changes then this is easy to alter. Your query would be similar to this:

;with cte (AccountNumber, basecodeItem, basecode, subcodeItem, subcode) as
(
  select AccountNumber,
    cast(left(basecode, charindex(' ',basecode+' ')-1) as varchar(50)) basecodeItem,
         stuff(basecode, 1, charindex(' ',basecode+' '), '') basecode,
    cast(left(subcode, charindex(' ',subcode+' ')-1) as varchar(50)) subcodeItem,
         stuff(subcode, 1, charindex(' ',subcode+' '), '') subcode
  from yourtable
  union all
  select AccountNumber,
    cast(left(basecode, charindex(' ',basecode+' ')-1) as varchar(50)) basecodeItem,
    stuff(basecode, 1, charindex(' ',basecode+' '), '') basecode,
    cast(left(subcode, charindex(' ',subcode+' ')-1) as varchar(50)) subcodeItem,
    stuff(subcode, 1, charindex(' ',subcode+' '), '') subcode
  from cte
  where basecode > '' or subcode > ''
)
select AccountNumber, basecodeItem, subcodeitem
from cte;

See SQL Fiddle with Demo

The result is:

|    ACCOUNTNUMBER | BASECODEITEM | SUBCODEITEM |
-------------------------------------------------
| 9689787209368900 |        AQTXG |       ZQ596 |
| 9689787209368900 |        AQTXG |       ZQ596 |
| 9689787209368900 |        AQTXG |       ZQ596 |
| 9689787209368900 |        AQTXG |       ZQ655 |
| 9689787209368900 |        ACC5Z |       ZC655 |