Crosstab with a large or undefined number of categories

Question

My real problem has to do with recording which of a very large number of anti-virus products agree that a given sample is a member of a given anti-virus family. The databas

Answer 1

create table vote (Photo integer, Voter text, Decision text);
insert into vote values
(1, 'Alex', 'Cat'),
(1, 'Bob', 'Dog'),
(1, 'Carol', 'Cat'),
(1, 'Dave', 'Cat'),
(1, 'Ed', 'Cat'),
(2, 'Alex', 'Cat'),
(2, 'Bob', 'Dog'),
(2, 'Carol', 'Cat'),
(2, 'Dave', 'Cat'),
(2, 'Ed', 'Dog'),
(3, 'Alex', 'Horse'),
(3, 'Bob', 'Horse'),
(3, 'Carol', 'Dog'),
(3, 'Dave', 'Horse'),
(3, 'Ed', 'Horse'),
(4, 'Alex', 'Horse'),
(4, 'Bob', 'Horse'),
(4, 'Carol', 'Cat'),
(4, 'Dave', 'Horse'),
(4, 'Ed', 'Horse'),
(5, 'Alex', 'Dog'),
(5, 'Bob', 'Cat'),
(5, 'Carol', 'Cat'),
(5, 'Dave', 'Cat'),
(5, 'Ed', 'Cat')
;

The query for the cat:

select photo,
    alex + bob + carol + dave + ed as Total,
    alex, bob, carol, dave, ed
from crosstab($$
    select
        photo, voter,
        case decision when 'Cat' then 1 else 0 end
    from vote
    order by photo
    $$,'
    select distinct voter
    from vote
    order by voter
    '
) as (
    photo integer,
    Alex integer,
    Bob integer,
    Carol integer,
    Dave integer,
    Ed integer
);
 photo | total | alex | bob | carol | dave | ed 
-------+-------+------+-----+-------+------+----
     1 |     4 |    1 |   0 |     1 |    1 |  1
     2 |     3 |    1 |   0 |     1 |    1 |  0
     3 |     0 |    0 |   0 |     0 |    0 |  0
     4 |     1 |    0 |   0 |     1 |    0 |  0
     5 |     4 |    0 |   1 |     1 |    1 |  1

If the number of voters is big or not known then it can be done dynamically:

do $do$
declare
voter_list text;
r record;
begin

drop table if exists pivot;

voter_list := (
    select string_agg(distinct voter, ' ' order by voter) from vote
    );

execute(format('
    create table pivot (
        decision text,
        photo integer,
        Total integer,
        %1$s
    )', (replace(voter_list, ' ', ' integer, ') || ' integer')
));

for r in
select distinct decision from vote
loop
    execute (format($f$
        insert into pivot
        select
            %3$L as decision,
            photo,
            %1$s as Total,
            %2$s
        from crosstab($ct$
            select
                photo, voter,
                case decision when %3$L then 1 else 0 end
            from vote
            order by photo
            $ct$,$ct$
            select distinct voter
            from vote
            order by voter
            $ct$
        ) as (
            photo integer,
            %4$s
        );$f$,
        replace(voter_list, ' ', ' + '),
        replace(voter_list, ' ', ', '),
        r.decision,
        replace(voter_list, ' ', ' integer, ') || ' integer'
    ));
end loop;
end; $do$;

The above code created the table pivot with all the decisions:

select * from pivot where decision = 'Cat';