Question

How to loop through a select statement results to have a formatted text?
for example the select is like:

select name from table 

and we want a variable @names like this:

"name1,name2,name3"

Database is SQL Server 2005

Answer 1

If table contains several records, i.e.:

1, name1, ..
2, name2, ..
3, name3, ..

then this query:

DECLARE @names VARCHAR(MAX)
SELECT @names = COALESCE(@names + ', ', '') + name
FROM table

will produce next result:

name1, name2, name3

See COALESCE on MSDN