How can I select from list of values in SQL Server

Question

I have very simple problem that I can't solve. I need to do something like this:

select distinct * from (1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 1, 6).

Anybody can help??

Edit

The data comes as a text file from one of our clients. It's totally unformatted (it's a single, very long line of text), but it may be possible to do so in Excel. But it's not practical for me, because I will need to use these values in my sql query. It's not convenient to do so every time I need to run a query.

Answer 1

A technique that has worked for me is to query a table that you know has a large amount of records in it, including just the Row_Number field in your result

Select Top 10000 Row_Number() OVER (Order by fieldintable) As 'recnum' From largetable

will return a result set of 10000 records from 1 to 10000, use this within another query to give you the desired results

Answer 2

In general :

SELECT 
  DISTINCT 
      FieldName1, FieldName2, ..., FieldNameN
FROM
  (
    Values
        ( ValueForField1, ValueForField2,..., ValueForFieldN ),
        ( ValueForField1, ValueForField2,..., ValueForFieldN ),
        ( ValueForField1, ValueForField2,..., ValueForFieldN ),
        ( ValueForField1, ValueForField2,..., ValueForFieldN ),
        ( ValueForField1, ValueForField2,..., ValueForFieldN )
  ) AS TempTableName ( FieldName1, FieldName2, ..., FieldNameN )

In your case :

Select 
  distinct
  TempTableName.Field1 
From 
  (
  VALUES
    (1), 
    (1), 
    (1), 
    (2), 
    (5), 
    (1), 
    (6)
  ) AS TempTableName (Field1)

Answer 3

PostgreSQL gives you 2 ways of doing this:

SELECT DISTINCT * FROM (VALUES('a'),('b'),('a'),('v')) AS tbl(col1)

or

SELECT DISTINCT * FROM (select unnest(array['a','b', 'a','v'])) AS tbl(col1)

using array approach you can also do something like this:

SELECT DISTINCT * FROM (select unnest(string_to_array('a;b;c;d;e;f;a;b;d', ';'))) AS tbl(col1)

Answer 4

This works on SQL Server 2005 and if there is maximal number:

SELECT * 
FROM
  (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY a.id) NUMBER
  FROM syscomments a
  CROSS JOIN syscomments b) c
WHERE c.NUMBER IN (1,4,6,7,9)

Answer 5

Another way that you can use is a query like this:

SELECT DISTINCT
    LTRIM(m.n.value('.[1]','varchar(8000)')) as columnName
FROM 
    (SELECT CAST('<XMLRoot><RowData>' + REPLACE(t.val,',','</RowData><RowData>') + '</RowData></XMLRoot>' AS XML) AS x
     FROM (SELECT '1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 1, 6') AS t(val)
    ) dt
  CROSS APPLY 
    x.nodes('/XMLRoot/RowData') m(n);

Answer 6

If you need an array, separate the array columns with a comma:

SELECT * FROM (VALUES('WOMENS'),('MENS'),('CHILDRENS')) as X([Attribute])
,(VALUES(742),(318)) AS z([StoreID])