Line Number and attaching single employee - sql

Question

SQL Server 2000 so no ROW_NUMBER available ....
I need to attach employees to the free lines.
I have a dataset 1 that tells me the free lines per country and region combo.
Table A – available line numbers to use:
Country Region Line Number Employee
---------------------------------------------------
A 1 1 Null
A 1 2 Null
A 2 1 Null
Table B – what employees are available to fill missing line numbers:
Country Region Employee
----------------------------------------
A 1 Dave Smith
A 1 Johnny Cash
A 1 Peter Seller
A 2 David Donald
So required output is
Table C - attaching a single employee to each combo of country, region, line number:
Country Region Line Number Employee
-------------------------------------------------------------
A 1 1 Dave Smith
A 1 2 Johnny Cash
A 2 1 David Donald
I tried a lot of joins, including self joins, and cross joins in SQL Server 2000, but can't get the desired output.
This is my last attempt:
Select
A.Country, A.Region, A.Line Number,
B.Employee
From
Table_A A
Inner Join
Table_B B On A.Country = B.Country and A.Region = B.Region

Answer 1

You need an additional join key after country and region for the assignment. For this, you can use row_number():
select a.*, b.employee
from (select a.*,
row_number() over (partition by country, region order by linenumber) as seqnum
from table_a a
) a join
(select b.*
row_number() over (partition by country, region order by (select null) ) as seqnum
from b
) b
on b.country = a.country and b.region = a.region and b.seqnum = a.seqnum

Answer 2

Just pulling together all of the suggestions, answers, and comments.
--Setting up the tables as given:
CREATE TABLE #e (
Country char(1),
Region int,
LineNumber int,
Employee varchar(50));
INSERT #e
VALUES ('A', 1, 1,NULL)
,('A',1,2,NULL)
,('A',2,1,NULL);
CREATE TABLE #r (
Country char(1),
Region int,
Employee varchar(50));
INSERT #r
VALUES
('A', 1, 'Dave Smith')
,('A', 1, 'Johnny Cash')
,('A', 1, 'Peter Sellers')
,('A', 2, 'David Donald');
--Creating a temporary table with
--a line number to join on.
CREATE TABLE #T(
LineNumber int,
Country char(1),
Region int,
Employee varchar(50));
--Populate the temporary table
--with the line number data.
INSERT INTO #T
(
LineNumber,
Country,
Region,
Employee
)
SELECT
(SELECT
COUNT(*) AS Line
FROM #r AS R2
WHERE R2.Employee <= #r.Employee
AND R2.Region = #r.Region
) AS LineNumber,
Country,
Region,
Employee
FROM #r;
--Set up the final output.
SELECT
A.Country,
A.Region,
A.LineNumber,
B.Employee
FROM
#e A
INNER JOIN
#T B
ON A.Country = B.Country
AND A.Region = B.Region
AND A.LineNumber = B.LineNumber
ORDER BY
A.Country,
A.Region,
A.LineNumber;
--Clean up.
DROP TABLE #r;
DROP TABLE #T;
DROP TABLE #e;
Results:
+---------+--------+------------+--------------+
| Country | Region | LineNumber | Employee |
+---------+--------+------------+--------------+
| A | 1 | 1 | Dave Smith |
| A | 1 | 2 | Johnny Cash |
| A | 2 | 1 | David Donald |
+---------+--------+------------+--------------+