Question

I use

SELECT Distinct  [Material]  FROM Mytable

and get the following result:

Material
 --------------
 1469CDHKabef
 237BI
 237BI5

Is there way to filter this output further so that each letter that appears in the individual strings (row) only appears once?

Desired output is:

12345679BCDHKIabef

or even better, get the whole thing choped upp so that each letter/number ends up in a row of its own

Answer 1

The below uses master..spt_values as an adhoc auxiliary numbers table just for demonstration purposes. You should create your own.

WITH Numbers(N) AS
(
SELECT number
FROM master..spt_values
WHERE type='P' AND number > 0
), Materials(Material) As
(
SELECT '1469CDHKabef' UNION ALL
SELECT '237BI' UNION ALL
SELECT '237BI5'
)
SELECT DISTINCT SUBSTRING(Material,N,1)
FROM Materials
JOIN Numbers ON N <= LEN(Material)