Question

I have the following recursive function:

ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[ListAncestors] 
(   
    @Id int
)   
RETURNS TABLE  
As  
RETURN  
(   
    WITH cte As  
    (   
        SELECT
            UserId,
            ManagerId,  
            Forename,
            Surname  
        FROM  
            dbo.Users   
        WHERE  
            UserId = @Id   

        UNION ALL  

        SELECT  
            T.UserID,
            T.ManagerID,  
            T.Forename,   
            T.Surname  
        FROM  
            cte As C INNER JOIN dbo.Users As T   
            ON C.UserID = T.ManagerID   
    )   
    SELECT
        Forename,
   Surname 
    FROM  
        cte
);

Basically what it does is returns the names of all users below the specified user (based on their ID). What I would like to do is modify this function and create another function which does a check if a specific userID is an ancestor of another.

I imagine the signature would look something like:

CREATE FUNCTION IsAncestor(@Id int, @AncestorId int) RETURNS BIT

Answer 1

How about:

WHILE @Id IS NOT NULL AND @Id <> @AncestorId
BEGIN
 SET @Id = (
  SELECT ManagerId FROM dbo.Users WHERE UserId = @Id
 )
END

RETURN CASE WHEN @Id IS NOT NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END