SQL Query with multiple values in one column - sql

Question

I've been beating my head on the desk trying to figure this one out. I have a table that stores job information, and reasons for a job not being completed. The reasons are numeric,01,02,03,etc. You can have two reasons for a pending job. If you select two reasons, they are stored in the same column, separated by a comma. This is an example from the JOBID table:
Job_Number User_Assigned PendingInfo
1 user1 01,02
There is another table named Pending, that stores what those values actually represent. 01=Not enough info, 02=Not enough time, 03=Waiting Review. Example:
Pending_Num PendingWord
01 Not Enough Info
02 Not Enough Time
What I'm trying to do is query the database to give me all the job numbers, users, pendinginfo, and pending reason. I can break out the first value, but can't figure out how to do the second. What my limited skills have so far:
select Job_number,user_assigned,SUBSTRING(pendinginfo,0,3),pendingword
from jobid,pending
where
SUBSTRING(pendinginfo,0,3)=pending.pending_num and
pendinginfo!='00,00' and
pendinginfo!='NULL'
What I would like to see for this example would be:
Job_Number User_Assigned PendingInfo PendingWord PendingInfo PendingWord
1 User1 01 Not Enough Info 02 Not Enough Time
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You really shouldn't store multiple items in one column if your SQL is ever going to want to process them individually. The "SQL gymnastics" you have to perform in those cases are both ugly hacks and performance degraders.
The ideal solution is to split the individual items into separate columns and, for 3NF, move those columns to a separate table as rows if you really want to do it properly (but baby steps are probably okay if you're sure there will never be more than two reasons in the short-medium term).
Then your queries will be both simpler and faster.
However, if that's not an option, you can use the afore-mentioned SQL gymnastics to do something like:
where find ( ',' |fld| ',', ',02,' ) > 0
assuming your SQL dialect has a string search function (find in this case, but I think charindex for SQLServer).
This will ensure all sub-columns begin and start with a comma (comma plus field plus comma) and look for a specific desired value (with the commas on either side to ensure it's a full sub-column match).
If you can't control what the application puts in that column, I would opt for the DBA solution - DBA solutions are defined as those a DBA has to do to work around the inadequacies of their users :-).
Create two new columns in that table and make an insert/update trigger which will populate them with the two reasons that a user puts into the original column.
Then query those two new columns for specific values rather than trying to split apart the old column.
This means that the cost of splitting is only on row insert/update, not on _every single select`, amortising that cost efficiently.
Still, my answer is to re-do the schema. That will be the best way in the long term in terms of speed, readable queries and maintainability.

Answer 2

I hope you are just maintaining the code and it's not a brand new implementation.
Please consider to use a different approach using a support table like this:
JOBS TABLE
jobID | userID
--------------
1 | user13
2 | user32
3 | user44
--------------
PENDING TABLE
pendingID | pendingText
---------------------------
01 | Not Enough Info
02 | Not Enough Time
---------------------------
JOB_PENDING TABLE
jobID | pendingID
-----------------
1 | 01
1 | 02
2 | 01
3 | 03
3 | 01
-----------------
You can easily query this tables using JOIN or subqueries.
If you need retro-compatibility on your software you can add a view to reach this goal.

Answer 3

I have a tables like:
Events
---------
eventId int
eventTypeIds nvarchar(50)
...
EventTypes
--------------
eventTypeId
Description
...
Each Event can have multiple eventtypes specified.
All I do is write 2 procedures in my site code, not SQL code
One procedure converts the table field (eventTypeIds) value like "3,4,15,6" into a ViewState array, so I can use it any where in code.
This procedure does the opposite it collects any options your checked and converts it in

Answer 4

If changing the schema is an option (which it probably should be) shouldn't you implement a many-to-many relationship here so that you have a bridging table between the two items? That way, you would store the number and its wording in one table, jobs in another, and "failure reasons for jobs" in the bridging table...

Answer 5

Have a look at a similar question I answered here
;WITH Numbers AS
(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY (SELECT 0)) AS N
FROM JobId
),
Split AS
(
SELECT JOB_NUMBER, USER_ASSIGNED, SUBSTRING(PENDING_INFO, Numbers.N, CHARINDEX(',', PENDING_INFO + ',', Numbers.N) - Numbers.N) AS PENDING_NUM
FROM JobId
JOIN Numbers ON Numbers.N <= DATALENGTH(PENDING_INFO) + 1
AND SUBSTRING(',' + PENDING_INFO, Numbers.N, 1) = ','
)
SELECT *
FROM Split JOIN Pending ON Split.PENDING_NUM = Pending.PENDING_NUM
The basic idea is that you have to multiply each row as many times as there are PENDING_NUMs. Then, extract the appropriate part of the string

Answer 6

While I agree with DBA perspective not to store multiple values in a single field it is doable, as bellow, practical for application logic and some performance issues. Let say you have 10000 user groups, each having average 1000 members. You may want to have a table user_groups with columns such as groupID and membersID. Your membersID column could be populated like this:
(',10,2001,20003,333,4520,') each number being a memberID, all separated with a comma. Add also a comma at the start and end of the data. Then your select would use like '%,someID,%'.
If you can not change your data ('01,02,03') or similar, let say you want rows containing 01 you still can use " select ... LIKE '01,%' OR '%,01' OR '%,01,%' " which will insure it match if at start, end or inside, while avoiding similar number (ie:101).