Ed Pollack (6/19/2014)
There's a bunch of fun ways to do this and in thios one case I went explicitly for the shortest, quickest, and dirtiest 🙂 Not the least efficient way to do it, but an example of an alternative that's good for non-huge data sets.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this. The problem with this type of mindset for me is that when somebody uses a less efficient method and it works in one case because the dataset is small they will often use that same method on a large dataset and suddenly they have performance issues. With such a super fast function readily available why not make that the go to?
_______________________________________________________________
Need help? Help us help you.
Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.
Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/