Question

I’m starting with this query:

SELECT     TOP 1 Parties.FirstName + ' ' + Parties.MiddleName + ' ' + Parties.LastName AS     Plaintiffs
FROM         Jackets INNER JOIN
                  JacketPartyLinks ON Jackets.Id =     JacketPartyLinks.Jacket_JacketPartyLink INNER JOIN
                      Parties ON Parties.Id = JacketPartyLinks.JacketPartyLink_Party
WHERE     (Jackets.Id = @JacketID) AND (JacketPartyLinks.Role = 0)

What I’d like to accomplish is to take a count of what’s returned, and if it’s one row, do nothing. If it’s more than one row, add something like “, et al”. Notice that this query returns a single column, and it while it should be able to run standalone, it also needs to work as a subquery.

How can this be done?

EDIT: Add TOP 1

Answer 1

Use top and count..over and then wrap it in an outer query, like so:

select
    Plantiffs + case when PlantiffCount > 1 then ', et al' else '' end as Plantiffs
from
    (
        SELECT TOP 1
            Parties.FirstName + ' ' + Parties.MiddleName + ' ' + Parties.LastName as Plantiffs,
            count(1) over () as PlantiffCount
        FROM
            Jackets 
            INNER JOIN JacketPartyLinks ON 
                Jackets.Id = JacketPartyLinks.Jacket_JacketPartyLink 
            INNER JOIN Parties ON 
                Parties.Id = JacketPartyLinks.JacketPartyLink_Party
        WHERE
            (Jackets.Id = @JacketID) AND (JacketPartyLinks.Role = 0)
        order by Parties.LastName asc
    ) x

The over () part after count tells it to count all rows and not group by anything. This is why there isn’t a group by clause in that query. You can use over with any aggregate function, which is pretty nifty.