Question

If I have a query that selects the top 5 rows of a table, is there a way to manipulate the SQL to present the values from these five rows as five columns?

Existing Query:

SELECT TOP 5 FirstName
FROM USER

Existing Result

• Jon
• Bill
• Jill
• Lori
• Rick

Desired Result

• Jon, Bill, Jill, Lori, Rick

*Note: * I’ve presented the query here in SQL Server syntax, but I would prefer a generally applicable solution.

Answer 1

SELECT
  MAX(CASE WHEN row_id = 1 THEN FirstName) AS Name1,
  MAX(CASE WHEN row_id = 2 THEN FirstName) AS Name2,
  MAX(CASE WHEN row_id = 3 THEN FirstName) AS Name3,
  MAX(CASE WHEN row_id = 4 THEN FirstName) AS Name4,
  MAX(CASE WHEN row_id = 5 THEN FirstName) AS Name5
FROM
(
  SELECT TOP 5 FirstName, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY xxx) as row_id FROM User ORDER BY xxx
)
  AS source

Note: Replace ROW_NUMBER() (which works in SQL Server) with any function that will allow you to number the records in the inner query; such as rownum, etc, depending on your version of SQL.