Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/plarsson/pivottableformicrosoftsqlserver.asp
Thanks Peter - nice looking article.I've not read the whole article yet (that's for when I have more time), but I wonder how your approach compares with the 'classic' crosstab/pivot table approaches...http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=2955http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/jeffs/archive/2005/05/02/4842.aspxIf anyone has time to evaluate this, I'd be very grateful!
Yes, in my very first early version. Then I realized that I could potentially come across the 8000 character limit for varchars.
Thanks Ryan.
I have tried to keep the dynamic SQL executions to a minimum for obvious speed reasons. What I think I have provided is a base for creating crosstabs/pivots for users to learn from and hopefully, evolve with.
There are some things to do with the code to make it "universal". But I thought it would be best to show how to start from the beginning.
To make the code "universal" you first have to build a dynamic query for preaggregating the data in #Aggregates. That is not very hard to to! Also, you must change the parameters to the future stored procedure to allow two fully qualified names such as RemoteServer1.OwnerLocal.ThatTable.ThisField for the rows and columns. Even the CellData field in #Aggregates could be taken from a parameter this way and called with 'SUM(x)' or 'COUNT(y)'. You catch my drift.
An example could be
EXEC dbo.CrossTabPivot 'Table1.OfficeName', 'Table2.Category', 'COUNT(t)', ...
Yes, SQL injection could possible be an issue here, if the data in ColumnText is written such way.
But since the beginning of the UPDATE-statement is hardwired with "UPDATE", I right now can't see a way to manipulate the statement to run SQL injection code.
I think it is worth mentioning the restrictions of that method such as:
- MAX number of columns (?),
- MAX total row length (8K).
I've used similar method using cursor instead of column table.
