DYNAMIC PIVOT

My previous PIVOT UNPIVOT post describes to organize data in a cross tab fashion or to transpose columns into rows and vice-versa.

This is fine only when you know how many columns you need. But when columns vary according to the query then how could you apply them on your scripts. The only way is to store them in a string variable at runtime and apply them in a dynamic SQL query, shown below.

This problem was also discussed on MSDN’s following link: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/transactsql/thread/26f86fd6-6d06-4cc5-9723-9ee4685bd48a where I proposed an answer also described below:

USE [tempdb]
GO

-- Create test tables
create table table1 (number int, desc varchar(20),
location int, numberatlocation int)
create table table2 (code int, name varchar(20))

-- Insert test data
insert into table1 values (12345,'test',1000,5)
insert into table1 values (12345,'test',1001,2)
insert into table1 values (12345,'test',1002,4)
insert into table1 values (12345,'test',1003,9)
insert into table1 values (12345,'test',1004,7)

insert into table2 values (1000,'loc1')
insert into table2 values (1001,'loc2')
insert into table2 values (1002,'loc3')
insert into table2 values (1003,'loc4')
insert into table2 values (1004,'loc5')

-- Static PIVOT
select number, description, [loc1], [loc2], [loc3], [loc4], [loc5]
from (select number, desc, numberatlocation, name
from table1 join table2 on table1.location=table2.code)p
PIVOT(MAX (numberatlocation) FOR Name IN ( [loc1], [loc2], [loc3], [loc4], [loc5] )
) AS pvt
ORDER BY number

Output of Static query:
number	desc	loc1	loc2	loc3	loc4	loc5
12345	test    5       2       4       9       7

-- Dynamic PIVOT

-- Lets add one more record on both the tables to check the results
insert into table1 values (12345,'test',1005,3)
insert into table2 values (1005,'loc6')

declare @col varchar(1000)
declare @sql varchar(2000)

select @col = COALESCE(@col + ', ','') + QUOTENAME(name)
from table2

select @col -- This gives: [loc1], [loc2], [loc3], [loc4], [loc5], [loc6]

-- Now setting this @col variable in the Dynamic SQL.
set @sql = '
select number, desc, ' + @col + '
from (select number, desc, numberatlocation, name
from table1 join table2 on table1.location=table2.code)p
PIVOT(MAX (numberatlocation) FOR Name IN ( ' + @col + ' )
) AS pvt
ORDER BY number'

print @sql

exec (@sql)

Output of Dynamic query:
number	desc	loc1	loc2	loc3	loc4	loc5    loc6
12345	test    5       2       4       9       7       3

-- Final Cleanup
drop table table1
drop table table2