SQL One to Many join getting single result per join - sql

Question

I want to export data from a SQL 2008 server to a file, csv or excel doesn't matter. In the database I have two entities, questions and answers. The problem is that the questions has multiple answers. A join will then result in multiple rows per each question. How can I do so the result is just one row per question and answers, just adding a new column per each answer. Like this:
Table structure:
Question
-------------
Id
Text
Category
Answer
-------------
Id
Text
IsCorrect
QuestionId
Example of result:
Col1 Col2 Col3 Col4 Col5 Col6 Col7
Result1: Question1, Question1Text, Answer1Prop1, Answer1Prop2, Answer2Prop1, Answer2Prop2, null
Result2: Question2, Question2Text, Answer3Prop1, Answer3Prop2, Answer4Prop1, Answer4Prop2, Answer5Prop3

Answer 1

If you can produce a result with your joins containing all the questions and all the answers with multiple rows, like you describe, I think you could use a cursor to loop over all the questions and answers, and then have a temptable/"hashtable" (#tableOfAnswers) to hold your final result. For each answer for a question you alter the #table and add a new column.
Something like this might put you in the right direction.
If you have a result looking something like this:
(In my example I've stored the result below in a temp table called "#q")
QuestionId text
1 answer1
1 answer2
1 answer3
1 answer4
2 answer1
2 answer2
Then you can declare a cursor on the result
Declare #questionId int
, #questionText varchar(max)
, #prevId int
, #colNo int = 1
, #colMax int = 0
, #i int = 1
, #sql nvarchar(max)
, #nulls nvarchar(max) = ''
Create table #tempTable
(
QuestionId int not null,
Col1 varchar(max) null
)
Declare question_cursor cursor for
Select QuestionId, text
From #q
Open question_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM question_cursor
INTO #questionId, #questionText
Set #prevId = 0
WHILE ##FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
If (#prevId = #questionId)
Begin
If (#colNo > #colMax)
Begin
Set #sql = N'alter table #tempTable add Col' + cast(#colNo as varchar) + ' varchar(max) null'
exec sp_executesql #statement = #sql
Set #colMax = #colMax + 1
End
Set #sql = N'update #tempTable set Col' + cast(#colNo as varchar) + ' = ''' + #questionText + ''' where QuestionId = ' + cast(#questionId as varchar)
print #sql
exec sp_executesql #statement = #sql
Set #colNo = #colNo + 1
End
Else Begin
Set #prevId = #questionId
Set #colNo = 1
while (#i <= #colMax)
begin
set #nulls = #nulls + ', null'
set #i = #i + 1
end
Set #sql = N'insert into #tempTable values (' + cast(#questionId as varchar) + ', ''' + #questionText + '''' + isnull(#nulls, '') +')'
print #sql
exec sp_executesql #statement = #sql
Set #colNo = #colNo + 1
End
FETCH NEXT FROM question_cursor
INTO #questionId, #questionText
END
Close question_cursor
Deallocate question_cursor
Select * from #tempTable
That will produce a result like this:
QuestionId Col1 Col2 Col3 Col4
1 text1 text2 text3 text4
2 text1 text2 NULL NULL
Not quite as elegant as .Net (or javascript even) would handle a problem like this.. But well, what you gonna do? :)
I hope that might shed some light on your problem :)
And for exporting it to a file I would just copy/paste the result in Sql Management Studio and paste it in Excel or something ;)