Aggregate bitwise-OR in a subquery

Question

Given the following table:

CREATE TABLE BitValues ( n int )

Is it possible to compute the bitwise-OR of n for all rows with

Answer 1

Are you looking for something like this?

EDIT: As noted in other comments, this answer was based on the assumption that the BitValues table would only contain powers of 2. I tried to read between the lines of the question and infer a use for the inline subquery.

declare @BitValues table (
    n int
)

declare @TestTable table (
    id int identity,
    name char(10),
    BitMappedColumn int
)

insert into @BitValues (n)
    select 1 union all select 2 union all select 4

insert into @TestTable
    (name, BitMappedColumn)
    select 'Joe', 5 union all select 'Bob', 8

select t.id, t.name, t.BitMappedColumn
    from @TestTable t
        inner join (select SUM(n) as BitMask from @BitValues) b
            on t.BitMappedColumn & b.BitMask <> 0

Answer 2

Your best bet for a readable and re-usable solution would be to write a a custom CLR Aggregate to perform bitwise or. A tutorial for creating this type of operation can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/91e6taax(VS.80).aspx

Answer 3

I see this post is pretty old and there are some useful answers but this is a pretty crazy straight forward method...

Select  
    SUM(DISTINCT(n & 0x01)) +
    SUM(DISTINCT(n & 0x02)) +
    SUM(DISTINCT(n & 0x04))
    as OrN
From BitValues

Answer 4

Preparations:

if object_id(N'tempdb..#t', N'U') is not null drop table #t;
create table #t ( n int );
insert into #t values (1), (2), (4), (3);

Solution:

select max(n & 8) + max(n & 4) + max(n & 2) + max(n & 1) from #t;