I looked through all of the options but couldn’t find a setting related to the issue. The solution (workaround) turned out to be very easy. Just add 0 to the column in the SELECT list and the values will appear.

For example:

SELECT myBooleanColumn + 0 as myBooleanColumn
FROM myTable

Either a 1 or a 0 will now appear as the value in the results.

The following code returns what I’m looking for, but only for one record:

DECLARE @KeywordList varchar(1000)

SELECT @KeywordList = COALESCE(@KeywordList + ', ', '') + k.keyword
FROM assets a
JOIN keywords k ON a.asset_guid = k.asset_guid
WHERE a.asset_guid = 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-023ECD4EBB4C'

SELECT @KeywordList

The problem was that I needed to return the results in a column for every record in the result set, and that code won’t work in a subquery.

My solution was to create a SQL user defined function.

Before proceeding, I should note that the method I’m posting should only be used if absolutely necessary. In addition to running your main query, you will also be running an additional query for every returned record, which can get pretty expensive.

But if you have a need as I did, this method should do the trick. Te following function accepts an asset GUID and returns the associated keywords in a comma-delimited list:

CREATE FUNCTION getDelimitedKeywords
   (@asset_guid uniqueidentifier )
RETURNS varchar(1000)
AS
BEGIN
   DECLARE @KeywordList varchar(1000)
   SELECT @KeywordList = COALESCE(@KeywordList + ', ', '') + keyword
   FROM keywords
   WHERE asset_guid = @asset_guid

   RETURN ( @KeywordList )
END

Now I can easily include the list in every row of my query by calling the function in my SELECT:

SELECT asset_name, dbo.getDelimitedKeywords(asset_guid) as Keywords
FROM assets

I didn’t research how to achieve the same results in mySQL, but it’s probably pretty easy to do using the GROUP_CONCAT function.

-rG

Here’s what I’m talking about:

I have two tables; the first table contains unique records describing games and the second contains game ids, scores, and user ids. Game id is joining the first table to the second in a one to many, something like this:

Games
======
gameID
gameName

GameScores
=========
gameID
userID
score

MY MISSION: Retrieve the user with the high score for each game in one query.

After much trial, error, and gnashing of teeth, the solution, as usual, proved to be ridiculously simple:

SELECT (select top 1 userID from GameScores where gameID = Games.gameID order by score desc) as topScoreUser,
                Games.gameName,Games.gameID, s.score
FROM Games
JOIN   GameScores s on s.gameID = Games.gameID

What this does is return one record for each game. Since I’m only returning the top record in the query and I’m ordering by score in descending order, I’m getting the top score and player for each game.

I’ve run into quite a few instances now where TOP has proved invaluable. Unfortunately it always seems to take me an hour of futzing around before I remember to use it!

-rG