Poor Man's SQL Pivot. List Questions as Columns and Answers per User in one row

Question

Current query:

SELECT order_id AS OrderNumber, ordName, ordLastName, question, answer 
FROM cart_survey 
JOIN orders 
    ON cart_surv         


        

Answer 1

This is known as a PIVOT there are two ways to perform this operation with a Static version or dynamic version.

Static Version is when you hard-code the values to become columns:

SELECT *
FROM
(
  SELECT order_id AS OrderNumber, ordName, ordLastName, question, answer 
  FROM cart_survey 
  JOIN orders 
      ON cart_survey.order_id=orders.ordID 
  JOIN survey_answers 
      ON survey_answers.id=cart_survey.answer_id 
  JOIN survey_questions 
      ON survey_questions.id=cart_survey.question_id
) x
pivot
(
  min(answer)
  for question in ([Type of Surgery:], [Month of Surgery:], 
                [Year of surgery:], [Current Ostomy System Brand:], 
                [Degree of Satisfaction:])
) p

A Dynamic Pivot, gets the list of the columns at run-time:

DECLARE @cols AS NVARCHAR(MAX),
    @query  AS NVARCHAR(MAX)

select @cols = STUFF((SELECT distinct ', ' + QUOTENAME(question)
                    from survey_questions
            FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE
            ).value('.', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)') 
        ,1,1,'')


set @query 
      = 'SELECT OrderNumber, ordname, orderLastName,' + @cols + ' from 
         (
            SELECT order_id AS OrderNumber, ordName, ordLastName, question, answer 
            FROM cart_survey 
            JOIN orders 
                ON cart_survey.order_id=orders.ordID 
            JOIN survey_answers 
                ON survey_answers.id=cart_survey.answer_id 
            JOIN survey_questions 
                ON survey_questions.id=cart_survey.question_id
         ) x
         pivot 
         (
            min(answer)
            for question in (' + @cols + ')
         ) p '

execute(@query)