Hi guys,

thanks a million - I checked out both methods and they both work great. I decided to go with the xml method as it means that I don't need to create ufn's or user tables in the db.

By the way in the xml method I had to assign an alias for the returned column i.e.

select * from (SELECT x.i.value('.', 'VARCHAR(7)')FROM @x.nodes('//i') x(i)) b

should read

select * from (SELECT x.i.value('.', 'VARCHAR(7)') as IDFROM @x.nodes('//i') x(i)) b

Thanks for your help.