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Here is the data

Looking at the data, we need to do three tasks here.

1.  Sort the data in Columns wise i.e “2″, “1″ and “3″ , it should be arranged as “1″, “2″ and “3″.

2. Sort the data in Row wise, as we already know.

3. Delete the duplicate records.

Output should be:

Now, let us see how we can achieve this. It very simple and tricky, will try to solve this in Two stage.

First stage

Will try to identify the Horizontal Sorting Order, that makes life easier to solve this.

a) First generate the row number for the original table making use of ranking function.
“SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY c1,c2,c3) AS RowNum, c1,c2,c3 FROM #t”

Out put :

b) Making use of above result set, try to obtain the Horizontal sorting order as a column called HorzSortOrder by applying row ranking function on RowNum

SELECT RowNum,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY RowNum ORDER BY RowNum, ColValue) AS HorzSortOrder
FROM (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY c1,c2,c3) AS RowNum, c1,c2,c3 FROM #t) p

c) Unpivot the Column name of (C1,C2,C3) as values for column called “ColName ” and unvipot the values of  the cloumns (C1,C2,C3)  for the column “ColValue”

Out put :

Now we are one step behind to get the final output from the above result set

Second Stage

a)  Making use of case statement over Horizontal sorting order column (HorzSortOrder) select the value of ColValue column by applying the aggregate function(MAX)

SELECT MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 1 THEN ColValue END) AS c1,
MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 2 THEN ColValue END) AS c2,
MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 3 THEN ColValue END) AS c3
FROM cteHorzSort
GROUP BY RowNum

Out Put :

b) Now remove the duplicate rows just making a small addition DISTINCT.

SELECT distinct MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 1 THEN ColValue END) AS c1,
MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 2 THEN ColValue END) AS c2,
MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 3 THEN ColValue END) AS c3
FROM cteHorzSort
GROUP BY RowNum

out put :

Here’s the complete source code

CREATE TABLE #t (c1 CHAR(1), c2 CHAR(1), c3 CHAR(1))
INSERT INTO #t (c1, c2, c3)
SELECT ’2′,’1′,’3′ UNION ALL
SELECT ’3′,’2′,’1′ UNION ALL
SELECT ‘Z’,'X’,'Y’ UNION ALL
SELECT ‘B’,'C’,'D’ UNION ALL
SELECT ‘Y’,'Z’,'X’ UNION ALL
SELECT ‘B’,'C’,'A’

select * from #t

;WITH
cteHorzSort AS
(

SELECT RowNum, ColName, ColValue,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY RowNum ORDER BY RowNum, ColValue) AS HorzSortOrder
FROM (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY c1,c2,c3) AS RowNum, c1,c2,c3 FROM #t) p
UNPIVOT (ColValue FOR ColName IN (c1,c2,c3)) AS nvp

)
SELECT distinct MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 1 THEN ColValue END) AS c1,
MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 2 THEN ColValue END) AS c2,
MAX(CASE WHEN HorzSortOrder = 3 THEN ColValue END) AS c3
FROM cteHorzSort
GROUP BY RowNum