Select products where the category belongs to any category in the hierarchy

Question

I have a products table that contains a FK for a category, the Categories table is created in a way that each category can have a parent category, example:

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Answer 1

i like to use a stack temp table for hierarchal data. here's a rough example -

-- create a categories table and fill it with 10 rows (with random parentIds)
CREATE TABLE Categories ( Id uniqueidentifier, ParentId uniqueidentifier )
GO

INSERT
INTO   Categories
SELECT NEWID(),
       NULL 
GO

INSERT
INTO   Categories
SELECT   TOP(1)NEWID(),
         Id
FROM     Categories
ORDER BY Id
GO 9


DECLARE  @lvl INT,            -- holds onto the level as we move throught the hierarchy
         @Id Uniqueidentifier -- the id of the current item in the stack

SET @lvl = 1

CREATE TABLE #stack (item UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, [lvl] INT)
-- we fill fill this table with the ids we want
CREATE TABLE #tmpCategories (Id UNIQUEIDENTIFIER)

-- for this example we’ll just select all the ids 
-- if we want all the children of a specific parent we would include it’s id in
-- this where clause
INSERT INTO #stack SELECT Id, @lvl FROM Categories WHERE ParentId IS NULL

WHILE @lvl > 0
BEGIN -- begin 1

      IF EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM #stack WHERE lvl = @lvl )
      BEGIN -- begin 2

      SELECT @Id = [item]
      FROM #stack
      WHERE lvl = @lvl

      INSERT INTO #tmpCategories
      SELECT @Id

      DELETE FROM #stack
      WHERE lvl = @lvl
      AND item = @Id

      INSERT INTO #stack
      SELECT Id, @lvl + 1
      FROM   Categories
      WHERE  ParentId = @Id

      IF @@ROWCOUNT > 0
      BEGIN -- begin 3
         SELECT @lvl = @lvl + 1
      END -- end 3
   END -- end 2
   ELSE
   SELECT @lvl = @lvl - 1

END -- end 1

DROP TABLE #stack

SELECT * FROM #tmpCategories
DROP TABLE #tmpCategories
DROP TABLE Categories

there is a good explanation here link text