How to use GROUP BY to concatenate strings in SQL Server?

Question

How do I get:

id       Name       Value
1          A          4
1          B          8
2          C          9

to

id               


        

Answer 1

You can improve performance significant the following way if group by contains mostly one item:

SELECT 
  [ID],

CASE WHEN MAX( [Name]) = MIN( [Name]) THEN 
MAX( [Name]) NameValues
ELSE

  STUFF((
    SELECT ', ' + [Name] + ':' + CAST([Value] AS VARCHAR(MAX)) 
    FROM #YourTable 
    WHERE (ID = Results.ID) 
    FOR XML PATH(''),TYPE).value('(./text())[1]','VARCHAR(MAX)')
  ,1,2,'') AS NameValues

END

FROM #YourTable Results
GROUP BY ID