Question

I need to select individual contacts with 1 status.

The problem is that a single contact can have multiple simultaneous statuses based on 4 distinct columns.

Active status supersedes inactive. If a contact has active and inactive status at the same time, it should default to active.

So far my sub queries work well independently but they return more than 1 value when a single contact has 2 or more simultaneous statuses in different columns.

Any ideas on how to return a single contact with 1 status?

SELECT Contact,
   ((SELECT 'Active'
     FROM   MyTable
     WHERE  Column1 = 1
             OR Column2 = 1)
    UNION
    (SELECT 'Inactive'
     FROM   MyTable
     WHERE  Column3 = 1
             OR Column4 = 1)) AS MyStatus
FROM   MyTable 

Answer 1

Have you considered using CASE instead?

SELECT
    Contact,
    MyStatus = CASE 
        WHEN Column1 = 1 OR Column2 = 1 THEN 'Active'
        WHEN Column3 = 1 OR Column4 = 1 THEN 'Inactive'
    END
FROM
    MyTable