Question

I’ve got a very complex query that joins eight (8) different tables.

For the sake of this question, though, I’ll simplify it with this type of structure:

create table table1(PacketID int, RequestID int, EmpID int, PartNo varchar(20))

insert into table1 values
 (1 , 1, 132, 'abc123'),
 (1 , 2, 132, 'abc456'),
 (1 , 3, 132, 'def123'),
 (1 , 4, 132, 'def456'),
 (2 , 5, 228, 'xyz123'),
 (3 , 6, 239, 'xyz321'),
 (3 , 7, 239, 'aaa000')

This type of table creates the following output:

|_P_|_R_|_Emp_|_PartNo_|
|_1_|_1_|_132_|_abc123_|
|_1_|_2_|_132_|_abc465_|
|_1_|_3_|_132_|_def123_|
|_1_|_4_|_132_|_def456_|
|_2_|_5_|_228_|_xyz123_|
|_3_|_6_|_239_|_xyz321_|
|_3_|_7_|_239_|_aaa000_|

I put together a fiddle of it here: http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!3/a3ce4/1

I was told they don’t really need this PacketID or RequestID, but what they do need is something that shows how many requests are in a packet and what request number of that packet needs attention.

I will still need the PacketID and RequestID values in order to make changes to the data.

So, I want to add a column to the table above to be something like this:

|_P_|_R_|_ReadAs_|_Emp_|_PartNo_|
|_1_|_1_|_1 of 4_|_132_|_abc123_|
|_1_|_2_|_2 of 4_|_132_|_abc465_|
|_1_|_3_|_3 of 4_|_132_|_def123_|
|_1_|_4_|_4 of 4_|_132_|_def456_|
|_2_|_5_|_1 of 1_|_228_|_xyz123_|
|_3_|_6_|_1 of 2_|_239_|_xyz321_|
|_3_|_7_|_2 of 2_|_239_|_aaa000_|

How exactly would I go about doing that?

If you just want to feel my pain and see the complete view defined on my SQL Server, here it is:

SELECT P.ID AS PacketID, R.ID AS RequestID, A.ID AS ActionID,
  EI.FIRSTNAME + ' ' + EI.LASTNAME AS Employee, P.DateStamp, 
  RQ.Description AS RequestType, L.Description AS Line, R.PartNo,
  R.Workorder, R.Qty, RZ.Description AS ReasonType, R.MTF,
  A.StatusID, S.Description AS Status, A.EmpID AS Stator, 
  A.DateStamp AS Stated
FROM dbo.Packet AS P
  LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Request AS R ON R.PacketID = P.ID
  INNER JOIN dbo.Action AS A ON R.ID = A.RequestID
  LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Action AS A2 ON A.RequestID = A2.RequestID
         AND (A.DateStamp < A2.DateStamp OR
         A.DateStamp = A2.DateStamp AND A.RequestID < A2.RequestID)
  INNER JOIN CPAPP.AIO_Test_Results.dbo.EmployeeInfo AS EI ON A.EmpID = EI.COUNT
  INNER JOIN dbo.RequestType AS RQ ON R.RequestTypeID = RQ.ID
  INNER JOIN dbo.Line AS L ON R.LineID = L.ID
  INNER JOIN dbo.ReasonType AS RZ ON R.ReasonTypeID = RZ.ID
  INNER JOIN dbo.Status AS S ON A.StatusID = S.ID
WHERE (A2.RequestID IS NULL)

Answer 1

Rather than just giving you the entire answer, I’ll try to explain how to create the answer yourself.

To get the consecutive sequence numbers have a look at ROW_NUMBER. You can provide a partition by (PacketID) and an order by (RequestId). This gets you the first number you need.

To get the counts, if you were using SQL Server 2012 you could use COUNT with a partition. On older versions of SQL Server you will have to use a JOIN and GROUP BY or a subselect.

This query demonstrates the principles using the subselect approach:

SELECT
    PacketID,
    RequestID,
    EmpID,
    PartNo,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY PacketID ORDER BY RequestID),
    (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table1 AS T2 WHERE T1.PacketId = T2.PacketId)
FROM table1 AS T1

http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!3/a3ce4/8

To get the exact format you requested you just need to convert the integers to strings and concatenate them. I’ll leave this for you to do, but here’s a few hints.

• CAST and CONVERT
• + (String Concatenation)