SQL Help: Select statement Concatenate a One to Many relationship

Question

For example I have two tables. The first table is student while the second table are the courses that the a student is taking. How can I use a select statement so that I can

Answer 1

So you want to see:

'Jade', 'Math, English, History'
'Kieveli', 'History, Biology, Physics'

Yes, comma separated is always desirable, but SQL isn't good at it. Here's the approach I was always planning on using:

Create a Function on the SQL server that uses a cursor to loop over the subquery (sorry - I didn't fully test this):

CREATE FUNCTION commacourselist(@studentname varchar(100))
RETURNS @List varchar(4096)
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @coursename varchar(100)

DECLARE FOR
SELECT course.name FROM course WHERE course.studentname = @studentname
OPEN coursecursor

FETCH NEXT FROM coursecursor INTO @coursename 
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
 IF @List = ''
 BEGIN
  SET @List = @coursename
 END
 ELSE
 BEGIN
  SET @List = @List + ',' + @coursename 
 END
 FETCH NEXT FROM coursecursor INTO @coursename 
END
CLOSE coursecursor 
DEALLOCATE coursecursor 

RETURN
END
GO

Then call the function in the query:

SELECT student.name, 
       commacourselist( student.name )  
FROM student