Question

I have a problem that is deceptively difficult! Lets say I have a DB table that looks like this:

student_id  score
502         0
502         2
502         4
407         3
407         1
407         3
50          2
50          4
50          3

What I am trying to achieve is a select statement that will give me this:

502  407   50
0    3     2
2    1     4
4    3     3

So I would be doing something like a select distinct on student_id and set those as column headings. Then I want to list all the scores for each distinct student_id.

Answer 1

I will put this to rest and say it is not possible to do this in a single sql statement where the statement produces the column headings (in this case student_id) based on what is in the table. It seems you really do need the power of a full programming language to accomplish the task.

The end goal for me is a CSV so I will create a CSV from the table data and then write a ruby script to read the cells and create a new CSV with the column headings and data.