Question

All, this is something I have not had to do before and I cannot locate a simalar question for some reason. I wish to return the NVARCHAR @columnHeaders to a String in C#. The SQL query that will build the string I want is this

DECLARE @columnHeaders NVARCHAR(MAX); 
SELECT @columnHeaders = 
    COALESCE (@columnHeaders + ',[' + Field + ']', '[' + Field + ']') 
FROM SomeTable;

However, how do I then pull the variable @columnHeaders back into C#? Note, I could use a function etc., but I do not want to use Stored Procedures, Views or Functions unless absolutely neccessary…

I can select the the columnn headers in to a DataTable using

DECLARE @columnHeaders NVARCHAR(MAX); 
SELECT COALESCE (@columnHeaders + ',[' + Field + ']', '[' + Field + ']') 
FROM SomeTable;

and manipulate in C#, but it would be nice to return the string direct from SQL.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

If you don’t want to use stored procedures, this will probably work.

DECLARE @columnHeaders NVARCHAR(MAX);  
    SELECT @columnHeaders =  
    COALESCE (@columnHeaders + ',[' + Field + ']', '[' + Field + ']')  
    FROM SomeTable; 
    select @columnHeaders

and use ExecuteScalar() to get the results.

However, I would personally recommend a stored procedure as being far neater, in that it keeps the SQL in the SQL Server.