Sql How to Join a table where data in Colums are alike - sql

Question

I am managing a large databse. I am trying to Join a table. but the data in the Colums dont actualy match. One has dashes and the other has space.
Such GPD 142 pol (Partnumber)in the Company table and GPD-142-pol (PartNumber)in the Customer table.
My query is written like this:
SELECT *
FROM CompanyPartsList
JOIN SalesReport
On FordPartsList.[Company Part Number] = SalesReport.[Customer Part #]
I tries something like this
SELECT *
FROM CompanyPartsList
JOIN SalesReport
On FordPartsList.[Company Part Number] Like SalesReport.[Customer Part #]
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

again doing this will be very slow , a solution would be a trigger to create the correct formatted column on either side
SELECT *
FROM CompanyPartsList
JOIN SalesReport
On FordPartsList.[Company Part Number] = Replace(SalesReport.[Customer Part #],'-',' ')

Answer 2

Try replacing characters that can cause the values to be different.
SELECT
*
FROM
CompanyPartsList cpl,
SalesReport sr
WHERE
REPLACE(REPLACE(cpl.[Company Part Number],'-',''),' ','') = REPLACE(REPLACE(sr.[Customer Part #],'-',''),' ','')

Answer 3

At the end of the day, for the JOIN to work, you've got to have matching values. So your only option is to find a way to make them equal.
Given your examples, I'd experiment to see if there's a way that you could normalize the values to a standard. For example, you could try to remove all the spaces and hyphens on both sides by using REPLACE, and see if that does it for you.
If you're able to get matches that way, you've got two choices. You could always do that normalization on-the-fly when you do the JOIN, but that would probably be performance prohibitive. Or you could add another column to each table, which you update at the same time you update the real part#, setting it to that value with the spaces, hyphens, etc, removed.
Aside from that headache, your potential problem is the chance of clashes. What happens if you've got part#s "123-4B" and "12-34B"? If you use my proposal, those two products would appear the same.

Answer 4

Create a function as mentioned in question 1007697 and modify it gently to strip off anything but alphabets and numbers
Create Function [dbo].[RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters](#Temp VarChar(1000))
Returns VarChar(1000)
AS
Begin
Declare #KeepValues as varchar(50)
Set #KeepValues = '%[^a-z0-9]%'
While PatIndex(#KeepValues, #Temp) > 0
Set #Temp = Stuff(#Temp, PatIndex(#KeepValues, #Temp), 1, '')
Return #Temp
End
Then you could compare data, but it may be slow on a large table:
SELECT *
FROM CompanyPartsList
JOIN SalesReport
On RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters(FordPartsList.[Company Part Number])
= RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters(SalesReport.[Customer Part #])

Answer 5

If you end up wanting to use a function I would recommend using an inline table valued function instead of a scalar function that has a while loop inside. The performance of that scalar function is going to degrade quickly as the table gets larger. Here is an example of using an inline table valued function and a tally table so the replacement is set based.
If this was my code I would prefer to use the REPLACE option if that is a possibility.
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[StripNonAlphaNumeric_itvf]
(
#OriginalText VARCHAR(8000)
) RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS
RETURN
WITH
E1(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM (VALUES (1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1))dt(n)),
E2(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E1 a, E1 b), --10E+2 or 100 rows
E4(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E2 a, E2 b), --10E+4 or 10,000 rows max
Tally(N) AS
(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM E4
)
select STUFF(
(
SELECT SUBSTRING(#OriginalText, t.N, 1)
FROM tally t
WHERE
(
ASCII(SUBSTRING(#OriginalText, t.N, 1)) BETWEEN 48 AND 57 --numbers 0 - 9
OR
ASCII(SUBSTRING(#OriginalText, t.N, 1)) BETWEEN 65 AND 90 --UPPERCASE letters
OR
ASCII(SUBSTRING(#OriginalText, t.N, 1)) BETWEEN 97 AND 122 --LOWERCASE letters
)
AND n <= len(#OriginalText)
FOR XML PATH('')
), 1 ,0 , '') AS CleanedText