How to split concatenated field in SQL with SSIS or SQL - sql

Question

I have problem that I have to split a concatenated field into different rows.
The delimiter is a "+" marker.
So in my field I have 3%+2%+1% and what I want is row 1 ->3%, row 2 -> 2% and so on.
But there is one more big problem: I don't know how many concatenated values we have so it could 3, 5 or maybe 10 values.
Can somebody help me solving this issue with SSIS or SQL.

Answer 1

For me #sdrzymala is correct here. I would normalise this data first before loading it to a database. If the client or report needed the data pivoted or denormalised again I would do this in client code.
1) First I would save the following split function and staging table "PercentsNormalised" into the database. I got the split function from this question here.
-- DDL Code:
Create FUNCTION dbo.SplitStrings
(
#List NVARCHAR(MAX),
#Delimiter NVARCHAR(255)
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN (SELECT Number = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Number),
Item FROM (SELECT Number, Item = LTRIM(RTRIM(SUBSTRING(#List, Number,
CHARINDEX(#Delimiter, #List + #Delimiter, Number) - Number)))
FROM (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY s1.[object_id])
FROM sys.all_objects AS s1 CROSS APPLY sys.all_objects) AS n(Number)
WHERE Number <= CONVERT(INT, LEN(#List))
AND SUBSTRING(#Delimiter + #List, Number, 1) = #Delimiter
) AS y);
GO
Create Table PercentsNormalised(
RowIndex Int,
-- Other fields here,
PercentValue Varchar(100)
)
GO
2) Either writing some SQL (like below) or using the same logic in a SSIS dataflow task transform the data like so and insert into the "PercentsNormalised" table created above.
With TestData As (
-- Replace with "real table" containing concatenated rows
Select '3%+2%+1%' As Percents Union All
Select '5%+1%+1%+0%' Union All
Select '10%+8%' Union All
Select '10%+5%+1%+1%+0%'
),
TestDataWithRowIndex As (
-- You might want to order the rows by another field
-- in the "real table"
Select Row_Number() Over (Order By Percents) As RowIndex,
Percents
From TestData
)
-- You could remove this insert and select and have the logic in a
-- SSIS Dataflow task
Insert PercentsNormalised
Select td.RowIndex,
ss.Item As PercentValue
From TestDataWithRowIndex As td
Cross Apply dbo.SplitStrings(td.Percents, '+') ss;
3) Write client code on the "PercentsNormalised" table using say the SQL pivot operator.