To illustrate, assume that I have two tables as follows:
VehicleID Name
1 Chuck
2 Larry
LocationID VehicleID City
1 1 New York
2 1 Seattle
3 1 Vancouver
4 2 Los Angeles
5 2 Houston
I want to write a query to return the following results:
VehicleID Name Locations
1 Chuck New York, Seattle, Vancouver
2 Larry Los Angeles, Houston
I know that this can be done using server side cursors, ie:
DECLARE @VehicleID int
DECLARE @VehicleName varchar(100)
DECLARE @LocationCity varchar(100)
DECLARE @Locations varchar(4000)
DECLARE @Results TABLE
(
VehicleID int
Name varchar(100)
Locations varchar(4000)
)
DECLARE VehiclesCursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT
[VehicleID]
, [Name]
FROM [Vehicles]
OPEN VehiclesCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM VehiclesCursor INTO
@VehicleID
, @VehicleName
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
SET @Locations=""
DECLARE LocationsCursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT
[City]
FROM [Locations]
WHERE [VehicleID] = @VehicleID
OPEN LocationsCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM LocationsCursor INTO
@LocationCity
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
SET @Locations = @Locations + @LocationCity
FETCH NEXT FROM LocationsCursor INTO
@LocationCity
END
CLOSE LocationsCursor
DEALLOCATE LocationsCursor
INSERT INTO @Results (VehicleID, Name, Locations) SELECT @VehicleID, @Name, @Locations
END
CLOSE VehiclesCursor
DEALLOCATE VehiclesCursor
SELECT * FROM @Results
However, as you can see, this requires a great deal of code. What I would like is a generic function that would allow me to do something like this:
SELECT VehicleID
, Name
, JOIN(SELECT City FROM Locations WHERE VehicleID = Vehicles.VehicleID, ', ') AS Locations
FROM Vehicles
Is this possible? Or something similar?
