More Efficient Way Than You Have Published

Sumanesh writes "Recently I read one article “Converting Multiple Rows into a CSV string�

(http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=256)

I have found one easy and more efficient way to achieve the same thing.
First I have a table called test with 2 columns (ID and Data)
And some data inserted into it.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].CombineData(@ID SMALLINT)
RETURNS VARCHAR(2000)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Data VARCHAR(2000)

SET @Data = ''
SELECT @Data = @Data + Data + ',' FROM Test WHERE ID = @ID
RETURN LEFT(@Data,LEN(@Data)-1)

END
GO

Then used a simple select query to achieve the same

SELECT DISTINCT ID, [dbo].CombineData(ID) FROM Test

Which achieved the same thing without using any temporary tables and Cursors. I am sure that you will accept that this is more efficient than the one that has been published.


Thanks
Sumanesh"