Question

I am using DB2 and have the following table (Table A – 3 Columns) :

EmpNum  YearMonth    Value

100     201201      2
100     201207      1
100     201206      7
102     201201      8
102     201205      15
102     201207      4

… etc

I would like to produce a new Table B with one row per employee, and a column for each YearMonth.

I am hoping that I can generate the Table B ‘YearMonth’ column name dynamically from the data as there will be 120 columns.

The value would then be put in the cell with the associated YearMonth heading to give a table like this :

EmpNum  201201  201202  201203  201204  201205 201206 201207 etc ….

100         2                                   7       1
102         8                            15             4

I have tried looking up ‘Stored Procedures’ and ‘Dynamic Column Names’ but cannot fine anything quite like this.

I have two questions :

1. Is this possible in DB2 ?
2. What should I look up for more information ?

Thanks in anticipation !

Ross

Answer 1

What you are looking for is called Pivot. Unfortunately, DB2 doesn’t implement the PIVOT statement (unlike Oracle). So it will not be possible to create a query that creates a dynamic number of columns.

Have a look at Poor Man's SQL Pivot. List Questions as Columns and Answers per User in one row. That’s the closest you can get to.