Combined rows with same id in to one row keeping all data - sql

Question

I have a table with a number of records for plants. A plant can have a number of names the table shows this as different records. The table is called new_plantsname
plantid name
1 tree
1 rose
2 bush
3 tree
3 bush
3 rose
This continues for over 3000 records
What I want is it to combined records with same plantid and show the different names in different columns:
plantid name1 name2 name3 ...
1 tree rose NULL
2 shrub NULL NULL
3 tree rose bush
Etc
I also want to save results to a new table

Answer 1

This is basically a PIVOT (you did not specify RDBMS) I am assuming MySQL and it does not have a PIVOT function so you will need to replicate this using an aggregate function with a CASE statement. This solution adds a rownumber to each row so you can determine how many name values you need to transform to columns.
If you know how many name values you are going to have you can hard-code the values:
select plantid,
max(case when nameRn = 'name1' then name end) Name1,
max(case when nameRn = 'name2' then name end) Name2,
max(case when nameRn = 'name3' then name end) Name3
from
(
select plantid, name,
concat('name', #num := if(#plantid = `plantid`, #num + 1, 1)) as nameRn,
#plantid := `plantid` as dummy
from
(
select plantid, name, #rn:=#rn+1 overall_row_num
from yourtable, (SELECT #rn:=0) r
) x
order by plantid, overall_row_num
) src
group by plantid;
See SQL Fiddle with Demo
If you have an unknown number of values, then you can use a prepared statement to generate a dynamic version of this:
SET #sql = NULL;
SELECT
GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT
CONCAT(
'max(case when nameRn = ''',
nameRn,
''' then name end) AS ',
nameRn
)
) INTO #sql
FROM
(
select plantid, name,
concat('name', #num := if(#plantid = `plantid`, #num + 1, 1)) as nameRn,
#plantid := `plantid` as dummy
from
(
select plantid, name, #rn:=#rn+1 overall_row_num
from yourtable, (SELECT #rn:=0) r
) x
order by plantid, overall_row_num
) src;
SET #sql = CONCAT('SELECT plantid, ', #sql, '
FROM
(
select plantid, name,
concat(''name'', #num := if(#plantid = `plantid`, #num + 1, 1)) as nameRn,
#plantid := `plantid` as dummy
from
(
select plantid, name, #rn:=#rn+1 overall_row_num
from yourtable, (SELECT #rn:=0) r
) x
order by plantid, overall_row_num
) src
GROUP BY plantid');
PREPARE stmt FROM #sql;
EXECUTE stmt;
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
See SQL Fiddle with Demo
Both will generate the same result:
| PLANTID | NAME1 | NAME2 | NAME3 |
-------------------------------------
| 1 | tree | rose | (null) |
| 2 | bush | (null) | (null) |
| 3 | tree | bush | rose |