SQL: Dynamic view with column names based on column values in source table

Question

Given the two sample tables here:

Tickets Table

ID  User    Description

0   James   This is a support ticket
1   Fred    This is a          


        

Answer 1

You can perform this with a PIVOT. When doing the PIVOT you can do it one of two ways, with a Static Pivot that you will code the rows to transform or a Dynamic Pivot which will create the list of columns at run-time:

Static Pivot (See SQL Fiddle for Demo):

select id, [user], [engineer], [manu], [OS]
from 
(
    select t.id
        , t.[user]
        , p.ticketid
        , p.label
        , p.value
    from tickets t
    inner join properties p
        on t.id = p.ticketid
) x
pivot
(
    min(value)
    for label in ([engineer], [manu], [OS])
) p

Or you can use a Dynamic Pivot (See SQL Fiddle for Demo):

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

select @cols = STUFF((SELECT distinct ',' + QUOTENAME(p.label) 
                    from tickets t
                    inner join properties p
                        on t.id = p.ticketid
            FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE
            ).value('.', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)') 
        ,1,1,'')

set @query = 'SELECT id, [user], ' + @cols + ' from 
             (
                 select t.id
                        , t.[user]
                        , p.ticketid
                        , p.label
                        , p.value
                    from tickets t
                    inner join properties p
                        on t.id = p.ticketid
            ) x
            pivot 
            (
                min(value)
                for label in (' + @cols + ')
            ) p '

execute(@query)

Both query will return the same results.