(ngadacz@ftresearch.com) writes:
> I am still not sure how i would loop through all of the records. if a
> use a cursor i get an error variable assignment is not allowed in a
> cursor declaration.

DELARE @str varchar(8000), @col varchar(30)

DECLARE cur INSENSTIVE CURSOR FOR
SELECT col FROM tbl ORDER BY col
OPEN cur
WHILE 1 = 1
BEGIN
FETCH cur INTO @col
IF @@fetch_status <> 0
BREAK

SELECT @str = CASE WHEN @str IS NULL
THEN @col
ELSE @str + ',' + @col
EMD
END
DEALLOCATE cur

This is one of the few things where you must use a cursor. Another poster
showed an example with a SELECT statement. However, that is not guaranteed
to work.

> The reason why I don't put this functionality is the client side is
> that I have multiple client sides: asp php and soon .aspx (.net) with
> changes I want to have the code centralized.

Beware that the above solution has a hard limit of the output string of
8000 characters.

In SQL2005 there will actually be a way to do this in a single statement,
by some fairly funny usage of the new XML stuff.


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp