0
votes

I'm using SQL Server 2014. I have addresses stored like this as one large string in a column called addr in a table tblAddress (I have no control over this it is from a 3rd party supplier)

addr
--------------------------------------------------
1 Smith Street;My Old Town; Someplace;Pluto;
5 SmokeyStreet;Someoldtown;Someotherplace;;
7 Grove Hill; Someolder town;Someotherplace;Earth

I would like to extract it so it looks like the below split into 4 columns:

Addr1            Addr2           Addr3            Addr4
----------------------------------------------------------
1 Smith Street   My Old Town     Someplace        Pluto
5 SmokeyStreet   Someoldtown     Someotherplace
7 Grove Hill     Someolder town  Someotherplace   Earth

I've tried:

SELECT  
    CAST('<x>' + REPLACE([addr], ';', '</x><x>') + '</x>' AS XML).value('/x[1]', 'nvarchar(50)') AS Addr1,
    CAST('<x>' + REPLACE([addr], ';', '</x><x>') + '</x>' AS XML).value('/x[2]', 'nvarchar(50)') AS Addr2,
    CAST('<x>' + REPLACE([addr], ';', '</x><x>') + '</x>' AS XML).value('/x[3]', 'nvarchar(50)') AS Addr3,
    CAST('<x>' + REPLACE([addr], ';', '</x><x>') + '</x>' AS XML).value('/x[4]', 'nvarchar(50)') AS Addr4
FROM
    tblAddress;

But I keep getting an error:

XML parsing: line 1, character 49, illegal name character

Where am I going wrong?

I can't recreate this. Does your actual data contain illegal XML characters? If so, perhaps try another method of splitting stringsGarethD