Make one-to-many relationship look like one-to-one - sql

Question

I'm using postgres 9.3.5.
Given the following data:
select * from department;
id | name
----+-----------
1 | sales
2 | marketing
3 | HR
and
select * from people;
id | department_id | first_name | last_name
----+---------------+------------+-----------
1 | 1 | Tom | Jones
2 | 1 | Bill | Cosby
3 | 2 | Jessica | Biel
4 | 1 | Rachel | Hunter
5 | 2 | John | Barnes
I'd like to return a result set like this:
id | name | first_name-1 | last_name-1 | first_name-2 | last_name-2 | first_name-3 | last_name-3
----+-----------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+--------------+------------
1 | sales | Tom | Jones | Bill | Cosby | Rachel | Hunter
2 | marketing | Jessica | Biel | John | Barnes
3 | HR |
Is this possible?
The answer provided here by Max Shawabkeh using the GROUP_CONCAT is close - but its not returning as extra fields in the dataset, its concatenating them into a single field.

Answer 1

You need cross-tabulation (sometimes called pivot).
Could look like this in your case:
SELECT * FROM crosstab(
$$SELECT d.id, d.name,'p' AS dummy_cat
,concat_ws(' ', p.first_name, p.last_name) AS person
FROM department d
LEFT JOIN people p ON p.department_id = d.id
ORDER BY d.department_id, p.id$$
)
AS ct (id int, department text, person_1 text, person_2 text, person_3 text);
Returns:
id department person_1 person_2 person_3
--------------------------------------------------------
1 sales Tom Jones Bill Cosby Rachel Hunter
2 marketing Jessica Biel John Barnes <NULL>
3 HR <NULL> <NULL> <NULL>
Very similar to this related case (explanation for special difficulties there):
Postgres - Transpose Rows to Columns
But this case is simpler: since you do not seem to care about the order in which persons are listed, you can use the basic one-parameter form of crosstab().
Also, according to your comment, you want all departments, even if no people are assigned. Adjusted the LEFT JOIN accordingly.
Basic details in this related answer:
PostgreSQL Crosstab Query