Question

I have a select statement I want to make. I want to select

SELECT COLUMN_NAME AS FieldName FROM   
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'table1'

However I want to create another column named Value which is a particular row in table1
so I have rows of the column name and the corresponding single value. Any thoughts on how to approach this?

Answer 1

The following query produces a value (the minimum) for each column:

    SELECT '''select '+COLUMN_NAME+''' AS FieldName, (select cast(MIN('+COLUMN_NAME+') as varchar(8000)) from '+const.tablename+')'
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS c cross join
         (select 'AllCurveNames' as tablename) const
    WHERE c.TABLE_NAME = const.tablename

However, this produces a separate query for each row. To combine them together, you need a string aggregate concatenation. This is how you would do it in SQL Server:

    declare @sql varchar(max);

    SELECT @sql = (select 'select '''+COLUMN_NAME+''' AS FieldName, (select cast(MIN('+COLUMN_NAME+') as varchar(8000)) from '+const.tablename + ') union all '
                   FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS c cross join
                        (select WHATEVER as tablename) const
                   WHERE c.TABLE_NAME = const.tablename
                   for xml path('')
                  );
    select @sql = LEFT(@sql, len(@sql) - 9);
    exec(@sql);