jmceuin (3/7/2013)
Sorry missed that. And I did more tinkering and just added and additional GROUP BY POPRCTNM to the very end of the statement rather than in the middle and it eliminated the duplicates. The error comes up but still processes anyway. Odd. Anyway. Otherwise, per rules if I don't have to install anything, I don't have to go through a bunch of change control nonsense. Adding a "view" to the database has been ruled as a non-issue for change control because it is not the same as changing a table or data nor installing software. Anyway...
Adding dbo.GROUP_CONCAT is not 'installing' anything per se. It's just another database object, same as how a VIEW would be considered, a SQLCLR Aggregate Function to be exact. However, using dbo.GROUP_CONCAT will require enabling SQLCLR on the instance in case it is not already enabled, so in that sense it may trip up your change control process since that requires a server option change.
Is there a difference in the performance or load that one method places against the database vs the other?
The SQLCLR performs slightly better in some cases than the XML method, and the XML method performs slightly better in other cases. For general discussion they are comparable on performance. It is all presented on the CodePlex site under documentation.
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