SQL Server 2017+ and SQL Azure: STRING_AGG
Starting with the next version of SQL Server, we can finally concatenate across rows without having to resort to any variable or XML witchery.
STRING_AGG (Transact-SQL)
Without grouping
SELECT STRING_AGG(Name, ', ') AS Departments
FROM HumanResources.Department;
With grouping:
SELECT GroupName, STRING_AGG(Name, ', ') AS Departments
FROM HumanResources.Department
GROUP BY GroupName;
With grouping and sub-sorting
SELECT GroupName, STRING_AGG(Name, ', ') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY Name ASC) AS Departments
FROM HumanResources.Department
GROUP BY GroupName;