Ideally, your best solution would be to normalize Table2 so you are not storing a comma separated list.
Once you have this data normalized then you can easily query the data. The new table structure could be similar to this:
CREATE TABLE T1
(
[col1] varchar(2),
[col2] varchar(5),
constraint pk1_t1 primary key (col1)
);
INSERT INTO T1
([col1], [col2])
VALUES
('C1', 'john'),
('C2', 'alex'),
('C3', 'piers'),
('C4', 'sara')
;
CREATE TABLE T2
(
[col1] varchar(2),
[col2] varchar(2),
constraint pk1_t2 primary key (col1, col2),
constraint fk1_col2 foreign key (col2) references t1 (col1)
);
INSERT INTO T2
([col1], [col2])
VALUES
('R1', 'C1'),
('R1', 'C2'),
('R1', 'C4'),
('R2', 'C3'),
('R2', 'C4'),
('R3', 'C1'),
('R3', 'C4')
;
Normalizing the tables would make it much easier for you to query the data by joining the tables:
select t2.col1, t1.col2
from t2
inner join t1
on t2.col2 = t1.col1
See Demo
Then if you wanted to display the data as a comma-separated list, you could use FOR XML PATH
and STUFF
:
select distinct t2.col1,
STUFF(
(SELECT distinct ', ' + t1.col2
FROM t1
inner join t2 t
on t1.col1 = t.col2
where t2.col1 = t.col1
FOR XML PATH ('')), 1, 1, '') col2
from t2;
See Demo.
If you are not able to normalize the data, then there are several things that you can do.
First, you could create a split function that will convert the data stored in the list into rows that can be joined on. The split function would be similar to this:
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[Split](@String varchar(MAX), @Delimiter char(1))
returns @temptable TABLE (items varchar(MAX))
as
begin
declare @idx int
declare @slice varchar(8000)
select @idx = 1
if len(@String)<1 or @String is null return
while @idx!= 0
begin
set @idx = charindex(@Delimiter,@String)
if @idx!=0
set @slice = left(@String,@idx - 1)
else
set @slice = @String
if(len(@slice)>0)
insert into @temptable(Items) values(@slice)
set @String = right(@String,len(@String) - @idx)
if len(@String) = 0 break
end
return
end;
When you use the split, function you can either leave the data in the multiple rows or you can concatenate the values back into a comma separated list:
;with cte as
(
select c.col1, t1.col2
from t1
inner join
(
select t2.col1, i.items col2
from t2
cross apply dbo.split(t2.col2, ',') i
) c
on t1.col1 = c.col2
)
select distinct c.col1,
STUFF(
(SELECT distinct ', ' + c1.col2
FROM cte c1
where c.col1 = c1.col1
FOR XML PATH ('')), 1, 1, '') col2
from cte c
See Demo.
A final way that you could get the result is by applying FOR XML PATH
directly.
select col1,
(
select ', '+t1.col2
from t1
where ','+t2.col2+',' like '%,'+cast(t1.col1 as varchar(10))+',%'
for xml path(''), type
).value('substring(text()[1], 3)', 'varchar(max)') as col2
from t2;
See SQL Fiddle with Demo