Question

Lets say we have a following table with two columns and following rows of data in SQLServer-2005:

Tiger    50
Wolf     4
Tiger    53
Lion     55
Elephant 54
Rhino    52
Lion     5

Can we have a sql query that result as following: Tiger,Wolf,Lion,Elephant,Rhino as a single string varchar output?Is it possible ?
using T-SQL not possible singe I am using the result in c# as a result of executescalar
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You can use for xml path to concatenate the values:

select distinct name + ', ' as [text()]
from @t
for xml path('')

-->
Elephant, Lion, Rhino, Tiger, Wolf, 

Chop of the last 2 bytes if you don’t like trailing ,‘s.

Not sure why you can’t use T-SQL, you can use this in combination with ExecuteScalar() just fine.

Sample data:

declare @t table (name varchar(max), id int)
insert into @t 
select 'Tiger', 50
union all select 'Wolf', 4
union all select 'Tiger', 53
union all select 'Lion', 55
union all select 'Elephant', 54
union all select 'Rhino', 52
union all select 'Lion', 5