Question

I have a table with a column that I want to extract out and put into a separate table.

For example, lets say I have a table named Contacts. Contacts has a column named Name which stores a string. Now I want to pull out the names into another table named Name and link the Contact.Name column to the Id of the Name table.

I can only use SQL to do this. Any ideas on the best way to go about this?

Let me know if I can clarify anything, thanks!

[edit]
One problem is that different contacts can be tied to the same name. So when different contacts have the same name and it gets exported the Name table would only have one unique row for that name and all the contacts would point to that row. I guess this wouldn’t make sense if I were actually working on a contact book, but I’m just using it to illustrate my problem.

Answer 1

CREATE TABLE Name (NameID int IDENTITY(1, 1), [Name] varchar(50))

INSERT INTO Name ([Name])
SELECT DISTINCT [Name]
FROM Contact

ALTER TABLE Contact
    ADD COLUMN NameID int

UPDATE Contact
SET NameID = [Name].NameID
FROM Contact
INNER JOIN [Name]
    ON Contact.[Name] = [Name].[Name]

ALTER TABLE Contact
    DROP COLUMN [Name]

Then add foreign key constraint, etc.