Create table of sum of events in SQL table - sql

Question

I'm trying to pivot a table from the format
| ID | access date |
--------------
| 1 | 08.10|
| 1 | 08.10|
| 4 | 08.10|
| 2 | 02.09|
To
|ID | 02.09 | 03.09 | 04.09 | ....
| 1 | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| 3 |
.
.
.
I've tried using the PIVOT function but since I have a lot of different dates I don't want to type out the query
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT [Sequence of events] as ID
,[Submission Date] as access_date
FROM [database_name].[dbo].[Event Logging]
) AS SOURCE_TABLE
PIVOT( SUM(ID) for access_date IN ("08.01", "09.01", "10.01"....)
) as pvt_table
I'm very new to SQL so I'd appreciate some insight into how to solve this problem.

Answer 1

This is not answer about solving problem in your way but it is about solving it another way.
What i would do is create 2 tables. First one would be called DATE_DB where i would store DATEID and DATE and it would look like this:
| DATEID | DATE |
| 1 | 01.01|
| 2 | 02.02|
....
Then in second table I store data like this:
| ID | DATEID | VALUE |
| 1 | 2 | 10 |
| 2 | 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 2 | 5 |
So in second table column ID is used only for primary key and has nothing to do but with tables like this and JOIN command you can use it like this:
SELECT DATE_DB.DATE, SECONDTABLE.VALUE
FROM SECONDTABLE
LEFT JOIN DATE_DB ON SECONDTABLE.DATEID = DATE_DB.DATE
ORDER BY DATE_DB.DATE
which will display result like this:
| DATE | VALUE |
| 02.01 | 10 |
| 02.01 | 3 |
| 02.01 | 5 |
| 03.01 | 4 |

Answer 2

Try it out like this, you need dynamic sql, note script isn't tested out, also when you naming your columns try not to have space, ether use CamelCase or underscore to separate words
And last thing, this is for SQL-Server, as you didn't tag anything and your code looks like sql-server
declare #cols nvarchar(max)
select #cols = STUFF((SELECT DISTINCT ',' + QUOTENAME([Submission Date])
from [database_name].[dbo].[Event Logging]
FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE
).value('.', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)')
,1,1,'')
declare #sql nvarchar(max);
set #sql = '
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT [Sequence of events] as ID
,[Submission Date] as access_date
FROM [database_name].[dbo].[Event Logging]
) AS SOURCE_TABLE
PIVOT( SUM(ID) for access_date IN (' + #cols + ')
) as pvt_table';
-- print (#sql)
execute (#sql)