Grouped string aggregation / LISTAGG for SQL Server
I'm sure this has been asked but I can't quite find the right search terms.
Given a schema like this:
| CarMakeID | CarMake
------------------------
| 1 | SuperCars
| 2 | MehCars
| CarMakeID | CarModelID | CarModel
-----------------------------------------
| 1 | 1 | Zoom
| 2 | 1 | Wow
| 3 | 1 | Awesome
| 4 | 2 | Mediocrity
| 5 | 2 | YoureSettling
I want to produce a dataset like this:
| CarMakeID | CarMake | CarModels
---------------------------------------------
| 1 | SuperCars | Zoom, Wow, Awesome
| 2 | MehCars | Mediocrity, YoureSettling
What do I do in place of 'AGG' for strings in SQL Server in the following style query?
SELECT *,
(SELECT AGG(CarModel)
FROM CarModels model
WHERE model.CarMakeID = make.CarMakeID
GROUP BY make.CarMakeID) as CarMakes
FROM CarMakes make
http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/concatenating-row-values-in-transact-sql/
It is an interesting problem in Transact SQL, for which there are a number of solutions and considerable debate. How do you go about producing a summary result in which a distinguishing column from each row in each particular category is listed in a 'aggregate' column? A simple, and intuitive way of displaying data is surprisingly difficult to achieve. Anith Sen gives a summary of different ways, and offers words of caution over the one you choose...
If it is SQL Server 2017 or SQL Server VNext, Azure SQL database you can use String_agg as below:
SELECT make.CarMakeId, make.CarMake,
CarModels = string_agg(model.CarModel, ', ')
FROM CarModels model
INNER JOIN CarMakes make
ON model.CarMakeId = make.CarMakeId
GROUP BY make.CarMakeId, make.CarMake
Output:
+-----------+-----------+---------------------------+
| CarMakeId | CarMake | CarModels |
+-----------+-----------+---------------------------+
| 1 | SuperCars | Zoom, Wow, Awesome |
| 2 | MehCars | Mediocrity, YoureSettling |
+-----------+-----------+---------------------------+