Question

I have a piece of code which allows me to take a single string and parse it into columns. However I have no idea where to start with the export. The import is easy enough with a split and insert.

With the export I will need to select about 6 of the 12 columns in table A, combine all these files into a delimited list and then return the string.

I assume that the best way of doing this would be the following?:

• Create the export procedure
• Create a temp table(e.g. “temp”)
• DECLARE the values I want to export
• Insert into the “temp”, a delimited string with all the values (i.e. new row = “col1,col2,col3,col4”) (this is the part i’m not sure about)
• Somehow return this value from the stored proc?

I’m fairly comfortable using SQL to select, update, combine and other menial tasks… but I literally have no idea when it comes to stored procs as I always try to avoid them and add functionality into my code instead!

Answer 1

Try this…

SELECT
        ISNULL(Col6 ,'')
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col7 ,'')
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col8 ,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col9 ,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col10,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col11,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col12,'')  AS MyList
FROM MyTable

You can cast or convert different datatypes using SQL. (Cast & Convert)
Here's a few examples:

SELECT
        ISNULL(CAST(Col6 as varchar) ,'')
+ '|' + ISNULL(CAST(Col7 as varchar(10)) ,'')
+ '|' + ISNULL(CONVERT(varchar(10),Col8) ,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(CONVERT(varchar(7),Col9 ),'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col10,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col11,'') 
+ '|' + ISNULL(Col12,'')  AS MyList
FROM MyTable