Question

I’m trying to create a SQL statement which will recreate the hierarchical container/folder/test structure in SilkCentral Test Manager.

• Test containers have no ParentID
• Test folders contain a ParentID and IsLeaf = 0
• Tests contain a ParentID and IsLeaf = 1

This Query results in all of the test containers, folders, and tests:

SELECT "NodeID", "ParentID", "Name", "IsLeaf", "OrderNumber"
FROM "Silk"."TM_TestPlanNodes" AS TPN
WHERE PROJECTID = 36
ORDER BY "ParentID", "OrderNumber", "IsLeaf"

Here are some of the Results:

NodeID  ParentID    Name                        IsLeaf  OrderNumber 
65408               Installation and Upgrades   0       0   
65445               Connectivity                0       1   
65448               Focus                       0       2   
65409               GINA / PLAP                 0       3   
65446               Graphical User Interface    0       4   
71038               Login Properties            0       5   
65449               Miscellaneous               0       6   
70636               Net Firewall                0       7   
70998               Software Updates            0       8   
65447               Third-party Services        0       9   
70805               SilkTest Automated Tests    0       10  
68812   65408       0. Setup                    0       0
65454   65408       1. Installations & Upgrades 0       1   
65450   65408       Typical/Custom Installation 0       2   

I would like this ordering instead:

The ParentID is sorted, but if there exists a Node with the ParentID=thePreviousNode’sID, then that is chosen next. If there are multiple of those nodes, they should be ordered by IsLeaf and then, OrderNumber.

How to accomplish this? I’m very limited in what I can do, because I think very complicated syntax will end up throwing errors in Silk. I was going to try a nested SELECT statement:

SELECT "NodeID", "ParentID", "Name","IsLeaf" 
FROM "Silk"."TM_TestPlanNodes" 
WHERE PROJECTID = '36'AND ParentID LIKE (
  SELECT ParentID 
  FROM "Silk"."TM_TestPlanNodes" 
  WHERE NAME = 'Installation and Upgrades')

But this is getting this error: “Could not execute report query: Subquery returned more than 1 value. This is not permitted when the subquery follows =, !=, <, <= , >, >= or when the subquery is used as an expression.”

This is why I’m fiddling with Order By.

Answer 1

You can use a recursive cte to create a hidden column and orderby that column. The hidden column should be Something like:

WITH cte (NodeID, ParentID, Name, IsLeaf, [Order])
AS
(
    SELECT NodeID, ParentID, Name, IsLeaf, cast(NodeID as nvarchar(10))
    FROM "Silk"."TM_TestPlanNodes" 
    WHERE PROJECTID = '36'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT "NodeID", "ParentID", "Name","IsLeaf", cast(leftNode.ParentID as nvarchar(10)) + cast(leftNode.NodeID as nvarchar(10))
    FROM "Silk"."TM_TestPlanNodes" as leftNode
    INNER JOIN cte on cte.NodeID = leftNode.ParentID
    WHERE leftNode.ParentID = cte.NodeID
)
select  "NodeID", "ParentID", "Name","IsLeaf"  from cte
order by cast([Order] as nvarchar(50))

This was written in notepad so is possible to have some errors, but the idea is to make an [order] column that for example for 65530 would be 654086554569530 (the parent_parent, the parent and the node)

EDIT:

this only works if the ids are all 5 characters long, but from here you can make the proper tweaks.