Question

I’m trying to write a query which aggregates many rows and returns a single string value to indicate whether or not each column contains a value. It needs to examine each column and if the column contains a ‘true’ value, then concatenate the string result to indicate so.

Given (on SQL Server 2008):

      Col1 | Col2
Row1: 0      0
Row2: 0      1 

I need a result stating “Col1 has no true, Col2 has true” (the comma doesn’t matter).

My assumption is that I need to combine a CASE or IF statement with an ANY operator, but so far the syntax escapes me.

Answer 1

The following query will produce these results: Col1 has no true, Col2 has true for your data:

SELECT CASE
          WHEN Col1Total = 0 THEN 'Col1 has no true'
          ELSE 'Col1 has true'
       END + ', ' +
   CASE
      WHEN Col2Total = 0 THEN 'Col2 has no true'
      ELSE 'col2 has true'
   END AS yourResult
FROM 
(
   SELECT SUM(Col1) AS Col1Total, SUM(Col2) AS Col2Total
   FROM yourTable
) AS t