How do I chunk the records in SQL Server 2005?

Question

lets say i have a column Name in tableA

Name
jennifer Hughs
Mike nadrotosky
Arnold Woods
Raj Jai Soni

so how do i put these results in seperate 3 columns like

FirstName MiddleName LastName
Jennifer              Hughs
.
.
.
Raj        Jai       Soni

I tried with Substring but not working.

Answer 1

Well, it looks at lot easier than it really is - especially if you start having people with multiple first- and/or middle names.

My approach would be to create a stored function that encapsulates that logic - it's really not that simple to just spell it out in an inline T-SQL statement.

Here's a first attempt - works as long as you don't have more than a single middle name:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SplitName(@InputName VARCHAR(200))
RETURNS @nameParts TABLE 
(
    FirstName VARCHAR(100),
    MiddleName VARCHAR(100),
    LastName VARCHAR(100)
)
AS BEGIN
    DECLARE @FirstSpace INT, @LastSpace INT

    SET @FirstSpace = CHARINDEX(' ', @InputName)
    SET @LastSpace = CHARINDEX(' ', @InputName, @FirstSpace+1)

    INSERT INTO @nameParts(FirstName, MiddleName, LastName)
        SELECT
            SUBSTRING(@InputName, 1, @FirstSpace),
            CASE @LastSpace 
                WHEN 0 THEN CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR(100))
                ELSE SUBSTRING(@InputName, @FirstSpace+1, @LastSpace - @FirstSpace)
            END,
            CASE @LastSpace 
                WHEN 0 THEN SUBSTRING(@InputName, @FirstSpace+1, 999)
                ELSE SUBSTRING(@InputName, @LastSpace, 999)
            END

    RETURN
END

If you test this with some sample data, you'll get the following results:

DECLARE @nameTable TABLE (NameValue VARCHAR(100))

INSERT INTO @nametable VALUES('Jennifer Hughes')
INSERT INTO @nametable VALUES('Mike Nadrotosky')
INSERT INTO @nametable VALUES('Arnold Woods')
INSERT INTO @nametable VALUES('Raj Jai Soni')

SELECT *
FROM @nameTable
CROSS APPLY dbo.SplitName(nameValue)

and the output for that SELECT is:

NameValue          FirstName   MiddleName    LastName
Jennifer Hughes    Jennifer       NULL       Hughes
Mike Nadrotosky    Mike           NULL       Nadrotosky
Arnold Woods       Arnold         NULL       Woods
Raj Jai Soni       Raj            Jai        Soni

Answer 2

@marc_s answer is the most complete. The few times I've had to do this they've been as one-off data load type jobs. If yours is the same I would strongly suggest just doing it in Excel!

1. Copy and paste the table from Management studio in to Excel
2. Use text to columns
3. Re-sort the whole row on column 3 to get all of those with no middle name at the top
4. Select all of the ones with an empty column 3 and move the values from Column 2 in to column 3
5. Import the data in to the destination SQL Table

For doing this in T-SQL I have done it using the string split function in SQL Sharp . This will however ultimately yield similar results to @marc_s so I won't go in to it here.