Paging bluefeet, there is a PIVOT question to be answered.
While that might seem like a joke, it has really happened, especially over on Stack Overflow. If you have seen any of my posts, then the chances are that I was answering a PIVOT question (or something similar). At this time of this post almost 20% of my total answers (over 3k) have been on pivot questions.
You might ask yourself, why pivot? The simple answer is because I love them. I have heard the arguments,1 “don’t do this type of data transformation on a server do it in the application layer”, etc. but my feeling is if there is a way to do it then go for it.
While not every database has a PIVOT function, I will answer or attempt to provide a solution on just about any RDBMS.
What’s the point of this post? My goal is to write a series of posts outlining different methods to PIVOT data in a variety of databases. I probably won’t be able to add much more to what is already out there on this topic, but this will be my spin on pivoting because I love it so!!
First up will be MySQL…Stay tuned.