Question

I have a table UserAliases (UserId, Alias) with multiple aliases per user. I need to query it and return all aliases for a given user, the trick is to return them all in one column.

Example:

UserId/Alias   1/MrX   1/MrY   1/MrA   2/Abc   2/Xyz 

I want the query result in the following format:

UserId/Alias   1/ MrX, MrY, MrA   2/ Abc, Xyz 

Thank you.

I’m using SQL Server 2005.

p.s. actual T-SQL query would be appreciated 🙂

Answer 1

You can use a function with COALESCE.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[GetAliasesById] (     @userID int ) RETURNS varchar(max) AS BEGIN     declare @output varchar(max)     select @output = COALESCE(@output + ', ', '') + alias     from UserAliases     where userid = @userID      return @output END  GO  SELECT UserID, dbo.GetAliasesByID(UserID) FROM UserAliases GROUP BY UserID  GO