grouping and switching the columns and rows - sql

Question

I don't know if this would officially be called a pivot, but the result that I would like is this:
+------+---------+------+
| Alex | Charley | Liza |
+------+---------+------+
| 213 | 345 | 1 |
| 23 | 111 | 5 |
| 42 | 52 | 2 |
| 323 | | 5 |
| 23 | | 1 |
| 324 | | 5 |
+------+---------+------+
my input data is in this form:
+-----+---------+
| Apt | Name |
+-----+---------+
| 213 | Alex |
| 23 | Alex |
| 42 | Alex |
| 323 | Alex |
| 23 | Alex |
| 324 | Alex |
| 345 | Charley |
| 111 | Charley |
| 52 | Charley |
| 1 | Liza |
| 5 | Liza |
| 2 | Liza |
| 5 | Liza |
| 1 | Liza |
| 5 | Liza |
+-----+---------+
because I have approximately 100 names, I don't want to have to do a ton of sub queries lik this
select null, null, thirdcolumn from...
select null, seconcolumn from...
select firstcolumn from...
Is there a way to do this with PIVOT or otherwise?

Answer 1

You can do this with dynamic PIVOT and the ROW_NUMBER() function:
DECLARE #cols AS VARCHAR(1000),
#query AS VARCHAR(8000)
SELECT #cols = STUFF((SELECT ',' + QUOTENAME(Name)
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT Name
FROM #test
)sub
ORDER BY Name
FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)')
,1,1,'')
PRINT #cols
SET #query = '
WITH cte AS (SELECT DISTINCT *
FROM #test)
,cte2 AS (SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY Name ORDER BY Apt)RowRank
FROM cte)
SELECT *
FROM cte2
PIVOT (max(Apt) for Name in ('+#cols+')) p
'
EXEC (#query)
SQL Fiddle - Distinct List, Specific Order
Edit: If you don't want the list to be distinct, eliminate the first cte above, and if you want to keep arbitrary ordering change the ORDER BY to (SELECT 1):
DECLARE #cols AS VARCHAR(1000),
#query AS VARCHAR(8000)
SELECT #cols = STUFF((SELECT ',' + QUOTENAME(Name)
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT Name
FROM #test
)sub
ORDER BY Name
FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)')
,1,1,'')
PRINT #cols
SET #query = '
WITH cte AS (SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY Name ORDER BY (SELECT 1))RowRank
FROM #test)
SELECT *
FROM cte
PIVOT (max(Apt) for Name in ('+#cols+')) p
'
EXEC (#query)
SQL Fiddle - Full List, Arbitrary Order
And finally, if you didn't want the RowRank field in your results, just re-use the #cols variable in your SELECT:
SET #query = '
WITH cte AS (SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY Name ORDER BY (SELECT 1))RowRank
FROM #test)
SELECT '+#cols+'
FROM cte
PIVOT (max(Apt) for Name in ('+#cols+')) p
'
EXEC (#query)

Answer 2

Oh, this is something of a pain, but you can do it with SQL. You are trying to concatenate the columns.
select seqnum,
max(case when name = 'Alex' then apt end) as Alex,
max(case when name = 'Charley' then apt end) as Charley,
max(case when name = 'Liza' then apt end) as Liza
from (select t.*, row_number() over (partition by name order by (select NULL)) as seqnum
from t
) t
group by seqnum
order by seqnum;
As a note: there is no guarantee that the original ordering will be the same within each column. As you know, SQL tables are inherently unordered, so you would need a column to specify the ordering.
To handle multiple names, I'd just get the list using a query such as:
select distinct 'max(case when name = '''+name+''' then apt end) as '+name+','
from t;
And copy the results into the query.