Question

I’m working with SQL Server 2008.

Let’s say I have these three tables:

Product

1, "Honda Civic" 
2, "Fiat Ritmo" 
3, "Ford Fiesta" 

ProductGroup

1, 1, 1
2, 1, 2
3, 3, 1
4, 2, 3
5, 2, 4
6, 1, 5

Group

1 American
2 Asian
3 European
4 Old
5 Fast

And let’s say I want to query these tables so as to get the following:

"Fiat Ritmo", "European, Old"
"Honda Civic", "Asian, Fast"
"Ford Focus", "American"

How can I do this?

I’m using paging on the client side so I can’t group the pages there.

Thanks for your help,

Barry

Answer 1

Use FOR XML PATH feature to get string grouping like this:

DECLARE @Product TABLE (Id INT PRIMARY KEY, Name NVARCHAR(100) NOT NULL)
INSERT @Product
VALUES(1, 'Honda Civic'), (2, 'Fiat Ritmo'), (3, 'Ford Fiesta')

DECLARE @ProductGroup TABLE(Product INT, Grp INT, PRIMARY KEY(Product, Grp))

INSERT @ProductGroup
VALUES 
(1, 1),
(1, 2),
(3, 1),
(2, 3),
(2, 4),
(1, 5)

DECLARE @Grp TABLE(Id INT PRIMARY KEY, NAME NVARCHAR(100))
INSERT @Grp
VALUES
(1, 'American'),
(2, 'Asian'),
(3, 'European'),
(4, 'Old'),
(5, 'Fast')

SELECT p.name, 
(
    SELECT Name+','
    FROM @ProductGroup pg
    JOIN @Grp g
        ON pg.Grp = g.Id
    WHERE pg.Product = p.Id
    FOR XML PATH('')
) Groups
FROM @Product p