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Asked: 2026-05-10T20:28:04+00:00

I have a data set that is organized in the following manner: Timestamp|A0001|A0002|A0003|A0004|B0001|B0002|B0003|B0004 …

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I have a data set that is organized in the following manner:

Timestamp|A0001|A0002|A0003|A0004|B0001|B0002|B0003|B0004 ... ---------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- 2008-1-1 |  1  |  2  | 10  |   6 |  20 |  35 | 300 |  8 2008-1-2 |  5  |  2  |  9  |   3 |  50 |  38 | 290 |  2     2008-1-4 |  7  |  7  | 11  |   0 |  30 |  87 | 350 |  0 2008-1-5 |  1  |  9  |  1  |   0 |  25 | 100 |  10 |  0 ...

Where A0001 is Value A of item #1 and B0001 is Value B of item #1. There can be over 60 different items in a table, and each item has an A value column and a B value column, meaning a total of over 120 columns in the table.

Where I want to get to is a 3 column result (Item index, A Value, B Value) that sums the A and B values for each item:

Index | A Value | B Value ------+---------+--------  0001 |   14    |   125  0002 |   20    |   260  0003 |   31    |   950  0004 |    9    |    10  ....

As I am going from columns to rows I would expect a pivot in the solution, but I am not sure of how to flesh it out. Part of the issue is how to strip out the A’s and B’s to form the values for the Index column. The other part is that I have never had to use a Pivot before, so I am stumbling over the basic syntax as well.

I think that ultimately I need to have a multi step solution that first builds the summations as:

ColName | Value --------+------ A0001   |  14 A0002   |  20 A0003   |  31 A0004   |   9 B0001   | 125 B0002   | 260 B0003   | 950 B0004   |  10

Then modify the ColName data to strip out the index:

ColName | Value | Index | Aspect --------+-------+-------+------- A0001   |  14   | 0001  |  A A0002   |  20   | 0002  |  A A0003   |  31   | 0003  |  A A0004   |   9   | 0004  |  A B0001   | 125   | 0001  |  B B0002   | 260   | 0002  |  B B0003   | 950   | 0003  |  B B0004   |  10   | 0004  |  B

Finally self join to move the B values up next to the A Values.

This seems to be a long winded process to get what I want. So I am after advice as to whether I am headed down the right path, or is there another approach that I have over looked that will make my life so much easier.

Note 1) The solution has to be in T-SQL on MSSQL 2005.

Note 2) The format of the table cannot be changed.

Edit Another method I have thought about uses UNIONs and individual SUM()s on each column:

SELECT '0001' as Index, SUM(A0001) as A, SUM(B0001) as B FROM TABLE UNION SELECT '0002' as Index, SUM(A0002) as A, SUM(B0002) as B FROM TABLE UNION SELECT '0003' as Index, SUM(A0003) as A, SUM(B0003) as B FROM TABLE UNION SELECT '0004' as Index, SUM(A0004) as A, SUM(B0004) as B FROM TABLE UNION ...

But this approach really doesn’t look very nice either

EDIT So far there are 2 great responses. But I would like to add two more conditions to the query 🙂

1) I need to select the rows based on a range of timestamps (minv < timestamp < maxv).

2) I also need to conditionally select rows on a UDF that processes the timestamp

Using Brettski’s table names, would the above translate to:

... (SELECT A0001, A0002, A0003, B0001, B0002, B0003   FROM ptest   WHERE timestamp>minv AND timestamp<maxv AND fn(timestamp)=fnv) p unpivot (val for item in (A0001, A0002, A0003, B0001, B0002, B0003)) as unpvt ...

Given that I have conditionally add the fn() requirement, I think that I also need to go down the dynamic SQL path as proposed by Jonathon. Especially as I have to build the same query for 12 different tables – all of the same style.

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1 Answer

  1. Same kinda answer here, that was fun:

    -- Get column names from system table DECLARE @phCols NVARCHAR(2000) SELECT @phCols = COALESCE(@phCols + ',[' + name + ']', '[' + name + ']')      FROM syscolumns WHERE id = (select id from sysobjects where name = 'Test' and type='U')  -- Get rid of the column we don't want SELECT @phCols = REPLACE(@phCols, '[Timestamp],', '')  -- Query & sum using the dynamic column names DECLARE @exec nvarchar(2000) SELECT @exec = '     select         SUBSTRING([Value], 2, LEN([Value]) - 1) as [Index],         SUM(CASE WHEN (LEFT([Value], 1) = ''A'') THEN Cols ELSE 0 END) as AValue,          SUM(CASE WHEN (LEFT([Value], 1) = ''B'') THEN Cols ELSE 0 END) as BValue     FROM     (         select *         from (select ' + @phCols + ' from Test) as t         unpivot (Cols FOR [Value] in (' + @phCols + ')) as p     ) _temp     GROUP BY SUBSTRING([Value], 2, LEN([Value]) - 1) ' EXECUTE(@exec)

    You don’t need to hard code column names in this one.

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