title: SQL string manipulation to return multiple rows
body: <p>I'm an experienced programmer, but relatively new to SQL.  We're using Oracle 10 and 11.  I have a system in place using SQL that combines actual rows with virtual rows (e.g. "SELECT 1 from DUAL") doing unions and intersects as needed, which all seems to work.</p>
  
  <p>My problem is that I need to combine this system which is expecting rows of data, with new data that will have the data in (let's say for simplification) comma delimited strings.</p>
  
  <p>So I think what I need is a way to convert a string like: "5,6,7,8" into 4 rows with one column each, with "5" in the first row, "6" in the second, etc.  In other languages, I'd do a "Split" with comma as the delimiter.  Of course, the data won't always have 4 entries.</p>
  
  <p>There's a second question, but I'll ask it separately.  But I suspect it will simplify things, if possible, if the solution to the above could be used as a table in another SQL statement (i.e., to work with my existing system).  Thanks for any help.</p>