Question

I have a table in SQL Server that contains an ID and also a column with multiple values separated by a comma (like the example below)

ID        Category_number
-------------------------
1           3,5,6,8
2            4,8,23
3           4,7,5,3

I need to make this into a lookup table with 1 category number per row, so like below;

ID        Category_Number
-------------------------
1               3
1               5
1               6

I have been told that XPATH might be the solution to this. Does anyone have any sample code that will do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

See this answer Split

Create that function in your database.

Then you can create the results you want using:

SELECT
    ID,
    A.S Category_Number
FROM
    MyCsvTable
    CROSS APPLY dbo.Split (',', MyCsvTable.Category_Number) A