Split one long comma string into multi column new table

Question

I am newish to SQL to please excuse any ignorance. I have a table, called \'temp\' that contains one Field with one long comma seperated string, thus:

Field1
Ap         


        

Answer 1

Try this

;WITH Split_Fields (Field, xmlfields)
AS
(
    SELECT Field1 AS Field,
    CONVERT(XML,'<Fields><field>'  
    + REPLACE(Field1,',', '</field><field>') + '</field></Fields>') AS xmlfields
      FROM Table1
)

 SELECT Field,      
 xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[1]','varchar(100)') AS Field1,    
 xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[2]','varchar(100)') AS Field2,
 xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[3]','varchar(100)') AS Field3,    
 xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[4]','varchar(100)') AS Field4,
 xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[5]','varchar(100)') AS Field5
 FROM Split_Fields

SQLFiddle Demo

OR

SELECT Field,
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[1]','varchar(100)') AS Field1, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[2]','varchar(100)') AS Field2, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[3]','varchar(100)') AS Field3, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[4]','varchar(100)') AS Field4, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[5]','varchar(100)') AS Field5 
FROM 
(
SELECT 
Field1 AS Field
,CONVERT(XML,'<Fields><field>' + REPLACE(Field1,',', '</field><field>') + '</field></Fields>') AS xmlfields 
FROM Table1
) Split_Fields

To insert into another table (ex: Detail) try below

;WITH Split_Fields (Field, xmlfields)
AS
( 
SELECT 
Field1 AS Field
,CONVERT(XML,'<Fields><field>' + REPLACE(Field1,',', '</field><field>') + '</field></Fields>') AS xmlfields 
FROM Table1
) 

INSERT INTO Detail
SELECT 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[1]','varchar(100)') AS Field1, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[2]','varchar(100)') AS Field2, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[3]','varchar(100)') AS Field3, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[4]','varchar(100)') AS Field4, 
xmlfields.value('/Fields[1]/field[5]','varchar(100)') AS Field5 
FROM Split_Fields

Answer 2

Oracle SQL:

SELECT  REPLACE(SUBSTR(r_str, 1, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 1) - 1), ' ') AS r_substr_1
,       REPLACE(SUBSTR(r_str, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 1) + 1, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 2) - INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 1) - 1), ' ') AS r_substr_2
,       REPLACE(SUBSTR(r_str, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 2) + 1, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 3) - INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 2) - 1), ' ') AS r_substr_3
,       REPLACE(SUBSTR(r_str, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 3) + 1, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 4) - INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 3) - 1), ' ') AS r_substr_4
,       REPLACE(SUBSTR(r_str, INSTR(r_str, ',', 1, 4) + 1), ' ')    AS r_substr_5
FROM
(
        SELECT  'Apples, oranges, pears,berries, melons' r_str FROM DUAL
);

Result: Apples  oranges pears   berries melons

Answer 3

Usually sql is used for structured data, and a comma separated string would come from an outside data file. If you have the outside data file available, load the data like this. Or consider exporting your original temp table to a data file if you have to.

bulk insert tbl_fruits from file.csv with fieldterminator=','