jay parker-305162 (8/20/2013)
Yes, Thanks!! Now I just need to try to wrap my ahead around understanding it and using it in the future.
You're welcome!
Articles abound on the FOR XML PATH method to concatenate strings. Here's a SQL Spackle article by Wayne Sheffield called Creating a comma-separated list[/url].
Because I didn't anticipate any special characters in the concatenated data that might send the XML creation awry, I omitted this part of the query from his example:
, TYPE).value('.','varchar(max)')
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?
My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.
Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
[url url=http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/St