Optimal way to concatenate/aggregate strings

Question

I\'m finding a way to aggregate strings from different rows into a single row. I\'m looking to do this in many different places, so having a function to facilitate this woul

Answer 1

Are methods using FOR XML PATH like below really that slow? Itzik Ben-Gan writes that this method has good performance in his T-SQL Querying book (Mr. Ben-Gan is a trustworthy source, in my view).

create table #t (id int, name varchar(20))

insert into #t
values (1, 'Matt'), (1, 'Rocks'), (2, 'Stylus')

select  id
        ,Names = stuff((select ', ' + name as [text()]
        from #t xt
        where xt.id = t.id
        for xml path('')), 1, 2, '')
from #t t
group by id