Unfortunately I am confined to SQLServer 2000 and cannot use CTE expressions,

but I introduced Identity column, and rearranged the previous query by rbarryyoung .

It works OK now .

Thank you all,

Branimir...

That is it,

... a procedure that has a part number as an input parameter, and which gives you all the equivalent parts.

What, in your opinion, is a best strategy for...

No, it is not classical Bill of Materials. It is more like you sell shock absorbers from many manufacturers for various types of cars , and every manufacturer/brand has...

Thank you all for giving me an efficient answer to the real problem.

However, there are some other questions.

It seems that the group naming after the ASCII value of the lowest...

I have got so far to this:

I have got the missing pairs from C->A dependency pair

using self joins

SELECT rawlist_1.Item2, rawlist_2.Item1

FROM ...