I'm looking for an efficient way to convert rows to columns in SQL server, I heard that PIVOT is not very fast, and I need to deal with lot of records.
This is my example:
-------------------------------
| Id | Value | ColumnName |
-------------------------------
| 1 | John | FirstName |
| 2 | 2.4 | Amount |
| 3 | ZH1E4A | PostalCode |
| 4 | Fork | LastName |
| 5 | 857685 | AccountNumber |
-------------------------------
This is my result:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| FirstName |Amount| PostalCode | LastName | AccountNumber |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| John | 2.4 | ZH1E4A | Fork | 857685 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
How can I build the result?
There are several ways that you can transform data from multiple rows into columns.
PIVOT
In SQL Server you can use the PIVOT
function to transform the data from rows to columns:
select Firstname, Amount, PostalCode, LastName, AccountNumber
from
(
select value, columnname
from yourtable
) d
pivot
(
max(value)
for columnname in (Firstname, Amount, PostalCode, LastName, AccountNumber)
) piv;
See Demo.
columnnames
If you have an unknown number of columnnames
that you want to transpose, then you can use dynamic SQL:
DECLARE @cols AS NVARCHAR(MAX),
@query AS NVARCHAR(MAX)
select @cols = STUFF((SELECT ',' + QUOTENAME(ColumnName)
from yourtable
group by ColumnName, id
order by id
FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE
).value('.', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)')
,1,1,'')
set @query = N'SELECT ' + @cols + N' from
(
select value, ColumnName
from yourtable
) x
pivot
(
max(value)
for ColumnName in (' + @cols + N')
) p '
exec sp_executesql @query;
See Demo.
If you do not want to use the PIVOT
function, then you can use an aggregate function with a CASE
expression:
select
max(case when columnname = 'FirstName' then value end) Firstname,
max(case when columnname = 'Amount' then value end) Amount,
max(case when columnname = 'PostalCode' then value end) PostalCode,
max(case when columnname = 'LastName' then value end) LastName,
max(case when columnname = 'AccountNumber' then value end) AccountNumber
from yourtable
See Demo.
This could also be completed using multiple joins, but you will need some column to associate each of the rows which you do not have in your sample data. But the basic syntax would be:
select fn.value as FirstName,
a.value as Amount,
pc.value as PostalCode,
ln.value as LastName,
an.value as AccountNumber
from yourtable fn
left join yourtable a
on fn.somecol = a.somecol
and a.columnname = 'Amount'
left join yourtable pc
on fn.somecol = pc.somecol
and pc.columnname = 'PostalCode'
left join yourtable ln
on fn.somecol = ln.somecol
and ln.columnname = 'LastName'
left join yourtable an
on fn.somecol = an.somecol
and an.columnname = 'AccountNumber'
where fn.columnname = 'Firstname'