Aggregating and Pivoting Data in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL

Conclusion

This chapter covered various solutions to data-aggregation problems that reused fundamental querying techniques I introduced earlier in the book. It also introduced new techniques, such as dealing with tiebreakers by using concatenation, calculating a minimum using the MAX function, pivoting, unpivoting, calculating custom aggregates by using specialized techniques, and more. This chapter also covered the new grouping sets features in SQL Server 2008 and showed how you can use those to efficiently address the need for dynamic analysis of aggregates.

As you probably noticed, data-aggregation techniques involve a lot of logical manipulation. If you’re looking for ways to improve your logic, you can practice pure logical puzzles, which have a lot in common with querying problems in terms of the thought processes involved. You can find pure logic puzzles in Appendix A.