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Asked: 2026-06-16T00:19:57+00:00

Ok, I’ve got a database table where data gets dumped by this horrid little

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Ok, I’ve got a database table where data gets dumped by this horrid little program that I despise, but can’t change at the moment. It has merchant data in there, names, addresses, and a set of categories that are pipe-delimited. What I need is a clean way to split these out, so I have one row for each merchant/category pair. From there, I can easily get it into the new data structure. This will need to be a repeatable process for a short period of time. I realize the optimal solution is to rid myself of this structure, but I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out how to do this cleanly in sql.

I already have a function in the database that will split a delimited string and return a table.

This is in sql server 2008, btw.

Edit (for clarity_
Basically, the following might be a merchant (with the categories attached – other fields redacted for simplicity. Using commas for field delimiters here).

Jimbo's Bait Shoppe, Bait|Sports Gear|Sandwiches

What I need is:

Jimbo's Bait Shoppe, Bait
Jimbo's Bait Shoppe, Sports Gear
Jimbo's Bait Shoppe, Sandwiches
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you have already written a function that splits the string and returns the table you can use a trigger.

    Create a trigger on INSERT on the table where the “horrid” program spits the data. The trigger will then take the unformatted data and populate two clean tables (I think in your case you should have two tables: one is a merchant, and another one is products, that are linked using one-to-many relationship using MerchantID).

    In this case you can use the table with unformatted data as a “dirty” table. You can cleanse straight after the “horrid” program imported a file.

    Please comment if you need help with the triggers

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