• Yes, Eugene's solution worked with compatibility_level=100 when I tested in my local machine.

    select D.Item as [Category], COUNT(*) AS Count

    from dbo.TestCategory as T

    cross apply

    (

    select * from dbo.fnSplit(T.[Category],'/')

    ) as D

    group by D.Item

    As Eugene's earlier reply, I copied the DelimitedSplit8K() function from Jeff Moden's (your) article http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/ and renamed as fnSplit() in my database. 🙂

    ALTER FUNCTION dbo.fnSplit

    --===== Define I/O parameters

    (@pString VARCHAR(8000), @pDelimiter CHAR(1))

    --WARNING!!! DO NOT USE MAX DATA-TYPES HERE! IT WILL KILL PERFORMANCE!

    RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS

    RETURN

    --===== "Inline" CTE Driven "Tally Table" produces values from 1 up to 10,000...

    -- enough to cover VARCHAR(8000)

    WITH E1(N) AS (

    SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL

    SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL

    SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1

    ), --10E+1 or 10 rows

    E2(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E1 a, E1 b), --10E+2 or 100 rows

    E4(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E2 a, E2 b), --10E+4 or 10,000 rows max

    cteTally(N) AS (--==== This provides the "base" CTE and limits the number of rows right up front

    -- for both a performance gain and prevention of accidental "overruns"

    SELECT TOP (ISNULL(DATALENGTH(@pString),0)) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM E4

    ),

    cteStart(N1) AS (--==== This returns N+1 (starting position of each "element" just once for each delimiter)

    SELECT 1 UNION ALL

    SELECT t.N+1 FROM cteTally t WHERE SUBSTRING(@pString,t.N,1) = @pDelimiter

    ),

    cteLen(N1,L1) AS(--==== Return start and length (for use in substring)

    SELECT s.N1,

    ISNULL(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(@pDelimiter,@pString,s.N1),0)-s.N1,8000)

    FROM cteStart s

    )

    --===== Do the actual split. The ISNULL/NULLIF combo handles the length for the final element when no delimiter is found.

    SELECT ItemNumber = ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY l.N1),

    Item = SUBSTRING(@pString, l.N1, l.L1)

    FROM cteLen l

    ;

    Once again Thank you all for helping me 🙂