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This is probably easy to do (I hope), but my experiments with OUTER JOIN and CROSS JOIN etc do not give the results I am after, so here's the question:

I need to do do a projection on fields in a table for each day of the week, where the day of the week represents a certain weight. I assumed a number table would help, but how?

Input table:

Key  prc   fixweight
1   23.4   0.2
2   78.1   0.6
3    8.7   0.3

Required output (left out: weight calculation on the columns, based on the day of the week):

1   23.4   0.2   1
1   23.4   0.2   2
1   23.4   0.2   3
1   23.4   0.2   4
1   23.4   0.2   5
1   23.4   0.2   6
1   23.4   0.2   7
2   78.1   0.6   1
2   78.1   0.6   2
2   78.1   0.6   3
2   78.1   0.6   4
2   78.1   0.6   5
2   78.1   0.6   6
2   78.1   0.6   7
3    8.7   0.3   1
3    8.7   0.3   2
3    8.7   0.3   3
3    8.7   0.3   4
3    8.7   0.3   5
3    8.7   0.3   6
3    8.7   0.3   7

1 Answer 1

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Silly, I just misinterpreted the results by using wrong ordering. The CROSS JOIN was indeed the correct approach. Here's what I did (please do correct me if this is not the proper approach to take):

WITH week(day) AS 
(
  SELECT TOP (7) number + 1 
  FROM [master].dbo.spt_values
  WHERE [type] = N'P' ORDER BY number
)

SELECT key, prc, fixweight, week.day
  FROM weights
  CROSS JOIN week
  ORDER BY key

As have been suggested by the comments: use spt_values only as a quick hack for ad-hoc queries or testing, in production you should use a number table or, if the list of numbers is so slow, you can use ypercube's solution:

SELECT key, prc, fixweight, week.day
  FROM weights
  CROSS JOIN (VALUES (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)) AS week(day)
  ORDER BY key
5
  • 3
    I would suggest creating your own numbers table, with only 7 values. Using master.dbo.spt_values is a quick and dirty workaround that works for testing.
    – Hannah Vernon
    May 8, 2014 at 3:58
  • 1
    I recently implemented a numbers table in our database that's exposed via inline-TVF. We end up with very compact queries like SELECT Number FROM dbo.GetNumberRange(1, 7). This also works great for generating date ranges (another TVF). I put 2,048 values in the table just like master.dbo.spt_values, but obviously it's expandable if more range is needed.
    – Jon Seigel
    May 8, 2014 at 13:38
  • 1
    For such a small list, you can also use ... CROSS JOIN (VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7)) AS week(day) in versions 2008+ May 8, 2014 at 17:21
  • @ypercube: it's a pity that the xpath to syntax is not available in SQL: CROSS JOIN (VALUES 1 TO 7) is just so much easier and clearer.
    – Abel
    May 8, 2014 at 21:20
  • @JonSeigel: indeed, we found more needs for number tables and have moved to inline table-valued functions (without originally knowing there was a term for that, though) to serve the general use-case.
    – Abel
    May 8, 2014 at 21:27

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