update a database table field with comma separated list from join

Question

I have two tables named Districts and Schools. The Districts table contains a column named Schools.

I need to populate the Schools column of the Districts table from the corresponding Schools table, so that each row in the Districts table has a comma separated list of values of school names from the Schools table.

How can I do this? Should I use an UPDATE query or a stored procedure?

I only got as far as:

SQL Fiddle

Districts Table

+------------+------+---------+
| DistrictId | Name | Schools |
+------------+------+---------+
|          1 | a    |         |
|          2 | b    |         |
|          3 | c    |         |
|          4 | d    |         |
+------------+------+---------+

Schools Table

+----------+------------+------------+
| SchoolId | SchoolName | DistrictId |
+----------+------------+------------+
|        1 | s1         |          1 |
|        2 | s2         |          1 |
|        3 | s3         |          2 |
|        4 | s4         |          2 |
|        5 | s5         |          4 |
+----------+------------+------------+

How the Output Needs to be

+------------+------+---------+
| DistrictId | Name | Schools |
+------------+------+---------+
|          1 | a    | s1,s2   |
|          2 | b    | s3,s4   |
|          3 | c    |         |
|          4 | d    | s5      |
+------------+------+---------+

Answer 1

With the help of FOR XML PATH and STUFF to CONCATENATE the values, you can easily update the table District with your desired result.

UPDATE  a
SET     a.Schools = b.SchoolList
FROM    Districts a
        INNER JOIN
        (
            SELECT  DistrictId,
                    STUFF((SELECT ', ' + SchoolName
                            FROM Schools
                            WHERE DistrictId = a.DistrictId
                            FOR XML PATH (''))
                        , 1, 1, '')  AS SchoolList
            FROM    Districts AS a
            GROUP   BY DistrictId
        ) b ON A.DistrictId = b.DistrictId
WHERE   b.SchoolList IS NOT NULL

• SQLFiddle Demo