This is relatively trivial to do with a correlated subquery. You can't use the COALESCE method highlighted in the blog post you mention unless you extract that to a user-defined function (or unless you only want to return one row at a time). Here is how I typically do this:
DECLARE @x TABLE
(
id INT,
row_num INT,
customer_code VARCHAR(32),
comments VARCHAR(32)
);
INSERT @x SELECT 1,1,'Dilbert','Hard'
UNION ALL SELECT 1,2,'Dilbert','Worker'
UNION ALL SELECT 2,1,'Wally','Lazy';
SELECT id, customer_code, comments = STUFF((SELECT ' ' + comments
FROM @x AS x2 WHERE id = x.id
ORDER BY row_num
FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 1, '')
FROM @x AS x
GROUP BY id, customer_code
ORDER BY id;
If you have a case where the data in comments could contain unsafe-for-XML characters (>, <, &), you should change this:
FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 1, '')
To this more elaborate approach:
FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value(N'(./text())[1]', N'varchar(max)'), 1, 1, '')
(Be sure to use the right destination data type, varchar or nvarchar, and the right length, and prefix all string literals with N if using nvarchar.)
When the automation fires off the second time, I get an error because the table already exists and, consequently, the second round of data isn't inserted.
I would suggest you to put a condition to check the existence of the table
If exists (select 1 from sys.tables where name = '' and type = 'U')
begin -- table exists, so insert values in it
insert into table_name values ()
end
else
begin -- table does not exist, so create it
create table table_name (column datatype)
insert into table_name values ()
end
You can even use below sql to create new blank table as the where 1=0 will always be false.
Note that it wont create any indexes from old_table into new_table.
SELECT *
INTO new_table
FROM old_table where 1=0
To capture errors, you can use TRY/CATCH
Best Answer
Two subqueries?