SQL Server Group Concat with Different characters

Posted by Molloch on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Molloch
Published on 2012-11-23T04:50:21Z Indexed on 2012/11/23 4:59 UTC
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sql

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sql-server

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query

I have looked through a number of solutions to emulating "Group concat" functionality in SQL Server. I wanted to make a more human readable solution though and I can't work out how to do it.

I have a view:

ParentID | ChildName

Which contains the records, for example:

1 | Max
1 | Jessie
2 | Steven
2 | Lucy
2 | Jake
3 | Mark

I want to "Group Concat" these to get:

1 | Max and Jessie
2 | Steven, Lucy and Jake
3 | Mark

So If there is only 1 child, just return name, if there are more than one, concat the last 2 with an ' and ' and all others with a ', '.

I am a bit stuck on how to do this without resorting to CLR, which I don't want to do. I am happy with a function - but speed is an issue and how do I determine the child number so I can choose between ' and ', ', ' or ''?

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