What this query does to create comma delimited list SQL Server?

Question

I\'ve written this query with the help of google to create a delimited list from a table but I didn\'t understand anything from this query.

Can anyone explain me wha

Answer 1

SQL Server 2017 makes this much easier with the new STRING_AGG. Recently came across this post and switched my STUFF/FOR XML strategy to use the new string function. Also avoids the need to do an extra JOIN/SUBQUERYand the overhead of FOR XML (and the odd-encoding issues) and hard to interpret SQL.

SELECT  E1.deptno, 
        STRING_AGG(E1.ename, ', ') AS allemp
FROM    EMP AS e1 
GROUP BY DEPTNO; 

Note: Also be sure to check out the counterpart STRING_SPLIT to make working with SQL delimited data much easier.