Curious why you wouldn't want to use a string splitter (like Jeff Moden's) for this:
DECLARE @Word1 VARCHAR(8000), @Word2 VARCHAR(8000), @Word3 VARCHAR(8000)
SELECT @Word1 = CASE ItemNumber WHEN 1 THEN Item ELSE @Word1 END
,@Word2 = CASE ItemNumber WHEN 2 THEN Item ELSE @Word2 END
,@Word3 = CASE ItemNumber WHEN 3 THEN Item ELSE @Word3 END
FROM dbo.DelimitedSplit8K('Word1, Word2, Word3', ',')
SELECT @Word1, @Word2, @Word3
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?
My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.
Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
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