Question

I would like to perform a simple break out by quantity in SQL.

I have as follows:

Table name : Products

product    quantity
=======    ========
Car        2
Bike       1

Results:

Car
Car
Bike

Thanks!

Answer 1

One solution is to join to a table of numbers. This can repeat the row quantity times. In T-SQL, a list of numbers can be generated with a recursive CTE:

; with  Numbers as
        (
        select  max(quantity) as nr
        from    YourTable
        union all
        select  nr - 1
        from    Numbers
        where   nr > 1
        )
select  yt.product
from    YourTable yt
join    Numbers nr
on      nr.nr <= yt.quantity
option  (maxrecursion 0)

Live example at SQL Fiddle.