Posting data like that doesn't help us help you. Please post your data like the following in the future so that we can test our stuff when we try to post an answer. Otherwise, the answer could be just words like "This is easy if you have a Tally Table or Tally function and use it to parse every six characters from the Management_Chain and number them in reverse with ROW_NUMBER and PARTITION BY".
Here's how to post the data so that it's readily consumable for people that want to help but don't want to have to build test data.
--==========================================================================
-- Create and populate a test table to help those that would help you.
--==========================================================================
CREATE TABLE #TestTable
(
Employee CHAR(6)
,Manager CHAR(6)
,Management_Chain VARCHAR(1000)
)
;
INSERT INTO #TestTable
(Employee,Manager,Management_Chain)
SELECT 'vp2221','bg7915','jd613hbs0712sm2389mw6143mc7580ab3793bg7915vp2221' UNION ALL
SELECT 'bg7915','ab3793','jd613hbs0712sm2389mw6143mc7580ab3793bg7915' UNION ALL
SELECT 'ab3793','mc7580','jd613hbs0712sm2389mw6143mc7580ab3793' UNION ALL
SELECT 'rx2131','bg7915','jd613hbs0712sm2389mw6143mc7580ab3793bg7915rx2131'
;
Next, build the following function. If your DBA squawks about it because it's a function, tell him it's neither a scalar (Scalar UDF) nor a multi-statement table valued function (mTVF) and that it's a very high performance, no read, inline Table Valued Function (iTVF). If you or he want to know more about why you need such a function, it's a very high performance method of replacing certain types of While loops and slothful recursive CTEs (rCTE) that counts.
/****** Object: UserDefinedFunction [dbo].[fnTally] Script Date: 06/21/2015 22:48:41 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[fnTally]
/**********************************************************************************************************************
Purpose:
Return a column of BIGINTs from @ZeroOrOne up to and including @MaxN with a max value of 1 Trillion.
As a performance note, it takes about 00:02:10 (hh:mm:ss) to generate 1 Billion numbers to a throw-away variable.
Usage:
--===== Syntax example (Returns BIGINT)
SELECT t.N
FROM dbo.fnTally(@ZeroOrOne,@MaxN) t
;
Notes:
1. Based on Itzik Ben-Gan's cascading CTE (cCTE) method for creating a "readless" Tally Table source of BIGINTs.
Refer to the following URLs for how it works and introduction for how it replaces certain loops.
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/62867/
http://sqlmag.com/sql-server/virtual-auxiliary-table-numbers
2. To start a sequence at 0, @ZeroOrOne must be 0 or NULL. Any other value that's convertable to the BIT data-type
will cause the sequence to start at 1.
3. If @ZeroOrOne = 1 and @MaxN = 0, no rows will be returned.
5. If @MaxN is negative or NULL, a "TOP" error will be returned.
6. @MaxN must be a positive number from >= the value of @ZeroOrOne up to and including 1 Billion. If a larger
number is used, the function will silently truncate after 1 Billion. If you actually need a sequence with
that many values, you should consider using a different tool. ;-)
7. There will be a substantial reduction in performance if "N" is sorted in descending order. If a descending
sort is required, use code similar to the following. Performance will decrease by about 27% but it's still
very fast especially compared with just doing a simple descending sort on "N", which is about 20 times slower.
If @ZeroOrOne is a 0, in this case, remove the "+1" from the code.
DECLARE @MaxN BIGINT;
SELECT @MaxN = 1000;
SELECT DescendingN = @MaxN-N+1
FROM dbo.fnTally(1,@MaxN);
8. There is no performance penalty for sorting "N" in ascending order because the output is explicity sorted by
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
Revision History:
Rev 00 - Unknown - Jeff Moden
- Initial creation with error handling for @MaxN.
Rev 01 - 09 Feb 2013 - Jeff Moden
- Modified to start at 0 or 1.
Rev 02 - 16 May 2013 - Jeff Moden
- Removed error handling for @MaxN because of exceptional cases.
Rev 03 - 22 Apr 2015 - Jeff Moden
- Modify to handle 1 Trillion rows for experimental purposes.
**********************************************************************************************************************/
(@ZeroOrOne BIT, @MaxN BIGINT)
RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS
RETURN 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) --10E1 or 10 rows
, E4(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E1 a, E1 b, E1 c, E1 d) --10E4 or 10 Thousand rows
,E12(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E4 a, E4 b, E4 c) --10E12 or 1 Trillion rows
SELECT N = 0 WHERE ISNULL(@ZeroOrOne,0)= 0 --Conditionally start at 0.
UNION ALL
SELECT TOP(@MaxN) N = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM E12 -- Values from 1 to @MaxN
;
From there, problems like the one you have posed become child's play...
--===== Solve the problem in a set-based manner
SELECT tt.Employee
,Manager = SUBSTRING(tt.Management_Chain,t.N*6+1,6)
,Distance = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY Employee ORDER BY t.N DESC)-1
FROM #TestTable tt
CROSS APPLY dbo.fnTally(0,LEN(tt.Management_Chain)/6-1) t
ORDER BY tt.Employee, Distance
;