Horizontal and vertical output from same SQL Server table - sql

Question

I am not sure this can be done, and tried numerous searches but no real result yet.
I have a SQL Server database with a table where I want to output results from a single table both horizontally and vertically. I realise this will be a complex SQL statement and have managed part of the vertical using a UNION but the horizontal eludes me.
The table has a field called "reference" and contains a string of characters such as "A03ACCEVEN18JS-SN1AA" or "A02ACCVCOM18JS-FN1AA". I want to create an output with a row for the count of references commencing A02 then a row for A03, A04 etc that also contain "18". Then expand horizontally to count the references with different letters after the hyphen, i.e. "-s" and "-f" etc. So the output would look like below,
S_Count | F_Count | J_Count etc
---------------------------------
A02 Row --> 58 | 23 | 16
A03 Row --> 22 | 43 | 53
A04 Row --> 7 | 31 | 23
etc
I managed to get one column so far with multiple where clauses and UNIONS like below but I now need the vertical. Can this be done please?
SELECT COUNT(reference) FROM mytable
WHERE reference LIKE 'A02%' AND reference LIKE '%%18%%' AND PATINDEX('%-P%',
reference) <> 0
UNION
SELECT COUNT(reference) FROM mytable
WHERE reference LIKE 'A03%' AND reference LIKE '%%18%%' AND PATINDEX('%-P%',
reference) <> 0
UNION
SELECT COUNT(reference) AS TOTAL FROM mytable
WHERE reference LIKE 'A04%' AND reference LIKE '%%18%%' AND PATINDEX('%-P%',
reference) <> 0;

Answer 1

Let's do it all in one hit :)
SELECT
LEFT(reference, 3) as ao_number,
SUM(CASE WHEN reference LIKE '%-S%' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) as s_count,
SUM(CASE WHEN reference LIKE '%-F%' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) as j_count,
SUM(CASE WHEN reference LIKE '%-J%' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) as s_count
FROM
table
WHERE
reference like 'A0%18%'
GROUP BY
LEFT(reference, 3)
Notes:
LEFT(reference, 3) pulls the A0x number off the start. Grouping by this will give us one row per distinct A0x number, so if a thousand variations of A00 to A09 are present, we'll get 10 rows
You don't need to (and shouldn't) say WHERE reference LIKE 'A03%' AND reference LIKE '%%18%%' etc.. I just combine them to 'A0%18%'. Note that I didn't combine them to 'A03%18%' as that would restrict our data too much. Don't double up your percent signs when doing a like
The SUM performs a count; the case when looks a the reference and if it has e.g. an -S in it, then it returns 1 else 0. Summing these effectively counts the reference patterns
By th way, for future searching purposes, this type of query is called a PIVOT. Most databases have some proprietary syntax to carry out pivoting, but I tend to remember/utilize this pattern because it's a bit more flexible and is cross-db compatible