Question

How do I get this:

entityid    name                 stringvalue
----------- -------------------- --------------------
1           ShortDescription     Coal
1           LongDescription      BlackCoal
1           ShortDescription     Gold
1           LongDescription      WhiteGold
1           ShortDescription     Steel
1           LongDescription      StainlessSteel

To become this:

entityid    ShortDescription     LongDescription
----------- -------------------- --------------------
1           Coal                 BlackCoal
1           Gold                 WhiteGold
1           Steel                StainlessSteel

The code I have so far is:

    select *
from (select entityid, cast(name as nvarchar(20)) as name, cast(stringvalue as nvarchar(20)) as stringvalue from metapropertyvalue) as d
pivot
(
    max(stringvalue)
    for [name] in ([ShortDescription],[LongDescription])
)
as p

Many thanks everyone,

Matt.

Answer 1

The pivot keyword is for aggregation use pretty much exclusively. You’ll likely have to do this manually via subqueries.

That aside, your table layout is a really bad idea. I’ve done this before, I know lots of other people that have done this before, it does NOT scale well. The biggest problem is that you can’t properly define indices on your data. You should seriously consider just changing the table directly to your “pivoted” format as that’s a proper relational style for it anyways.