Alphabet Series Generation in SQL Server

Question

I am trying to generate a series of alphabets, using SQL Server.

Suppose I have a tables as follows

DECLARE @Funding TABLE (FundingDetailID INT,FundingID INT, DetailDescription VARCHAR(50))
INSERT INTO @Funding (FundingDetailID ,FundingID , DetailDescription) VALUES (1,107,'Desc 1')
INSERT INTO @Funding (FundingDetailID ,FundingID , DetailDescription) VALUES (1,107,'Desc 2')
INSERT INTO @Funding (FundingDetailID ,FundingID , DetailDescription) VALUES (1,107,'Desc 3')

I am trying to obtain the following result.

a) Desc 1
b) Desc 2
c) Desc 3

How do I generate “a)”, “b)”, … ? I am not allowed to add any extra temp table or table variable for storing the alphabets initially. They should be generated.

And this is to be done in SQL Server 2005.

Any thoughts ?

Thanks

Lijo Cheeran Joseph

Answer 1

Use ROW_NUMBER() as follows

DECLARE @Funding TABLE (FundingDetailID INT,FundingID INT, DetailDescription VARCHAR(50))
INSERT INTO @Funding VALUES (1,107,'Desc 1')
INSERT INTO @Funding VALUES (1,107,'Desc 2')
INSERT INTO @Funding VALUES (1,107,'Desc 3')

SELECT CHAR (CAST (96+ROW_NUMBER() OVER (Order BY FundingDetailID) AS VARCHAR)) + ') ' + DetailDescription
FROM @Funding



-----------------------------------------------------
a) Desc 1
b) Desc 2
c) Desc 3