How to SORT in order as entered in SQL Server?

Question

I\'m using SQL Server and I\'m trying to find results but I would like to get the results in the same order as I had input the conditions.

My code:

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Answer 1

Okay, after some re-thinking I'll offer the ultimative XML based type-safe and sort-safe splitter:

Declare @List varchar(max)='212345, 312345, 145687, 658975, 256987, 365874, 568974, 124578, 125689';
DECLARE @delimiter VARCHAR(10)=', ';

WITH Casted AS
(
    SELECT (LEN(@List)-LEN(REPLACE(@List,@delimiter,'')))/LEN(REPLACE(@delimiter,' ','.')) + 1 AS ElementCount
           ,CAST('' + REPLACE((SELECT @List AS [*] FOR XML PATH('')),@delimiter,'')+'' AS XML) AS ListXml
)
,Tally(Nmbr) As
(
    SELECT TOP((SELECT ElementCount FROM Casted)) ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM master..spt_values v1 CROSS JOIN master..spt_values v2
)
SELECT Tally.Nmbr AS Position
      ,(SELECT ListXml.value('(/x[sql:column("Tally.Nmbr")])[1]','int') FROM Casted) AS Item 
FROM Tally;

The trick is to create a list of running numbers with the fitting number of element (a number's table was even better) and to pick the elements according to their position.

Hint: This is rather slow...

UPDATE: even better:

WITH Casted AS
(
    SELECT (LEN(@List)-LEN(REPLACE(@List,@delimiter,'')))/LEN(REPLACE(@delimiter,' ','.')) + 1 AS ElementCount
           ,CAST('' + REPLACE((SELECT @List AS [*] FOR XML PATH('')),@delimiter,'')+'' AS XML)
           .query('
                   for $x in /x
                   return {$x/text()[1]}
                  ') AS ListXml
)
SELECT x.value('@p','int') AS Position
      ,x.value('text()[1]','int') AS Item 
FROM Casted
CROSS APPLY Casted.ListXml.nodes('/x') AS A(x);

Elements are create as

TheValue

Regrettfully the XQuery function position() is not available to retrieve the value. But you can use the trick to count all elements before a given node. this is scaling badly, as this count must be performed over and over. The more elements the worse it goes...

UPDATE2: With a known count of elements one might use this (much better performance)

Use XQuery to iterate a literally given list:

WITH Casted AS
(
    SELECT (LEN(@List)-LEN(REPLACE(@List,@delimiter,'')))/LEN(REPLACE(@delimiter,' ','.')) + 1 AS ElementCount
           ,CAST('' + REPLACE((SELECT @List AS [*] FOR XML PATH('')),@delimiter,'')+'' AS XML)
           .query('
                   for $i in (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
                   return {/x[$i]/text()[1]}
                  ') AS ListXml
)
SELECT x.value('@p','int') AS Position
      ,x.value('text()[1]','int') AS Item 
FROM Casted
CROSS APPLY Casted.ListXml.nodes('/x') AS A(x);