SQL Server : display multiple rows in one row and multiple columns - sql-server

Question

I've found similar questions but nothing that has a solution I've been able to make work for me. I've been out of practice and stuck on this.
I have a table that tracks employee positions. Each employee can have any number of active positions. I want to display each employee as a single record with all their positions in that record spanning multiple columns.
A glance at the data shows that there are no employees with more than 6 active positions and since this is a one-time query, I should be able to work with that number.
The positions all have a sequence number assigned but they're not in a nice handy order - inactive positions for an employee retain the sequence number.
So right now I have something that looks like this:
ID | Name | Title | Cat | Seq
------------------------------
10 | John | Asst. | HR | 13
10 | John | Tutor | EDU | 17
11 | Sue | Mgr | PA | 6
11 | Sue | Adj. | EDU | 7
11 | Sue | Tutor | EDU | 13
...
11 | Sue | Asst. | HR | 22
But I want it to look like this:
ID | Name | Title 1 | Cat 1 | Title 2 | Cat 2 | Title 3...| Title 6 | Cat 6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 | John | Asst. | HR | Tutor | EDU | NULL | NULL | NULL
11 | Sue | Mgr. | PA | Adj. | EDU | Tutor | Asst. | HR
Let me know what additional information I need to provide.

Answer 1

You can use a combination of row_number and pivots to do this. Using SQL Server 2012+ the query could look something like below. It's a bit messy, but it should get the job done, although there might be better ways to accomplish the same result.
select
id
, name
, max([Title 1]) as [Title 1]
, max([Cat 1]) as [Cat 1]
, max([Title 2]) as [Title 2]
, max([Cat 2]) as [Cat 2]
, max([Title 3]) as [Title 3]
, max([Cat 3]) as [Cat 3]
-- and so on for the remaining columns...
from (
select
id, name, title, cat
, t = concat('Title ',row_number() over (partition by id order by seq))
, c = concat('Cat ',row_number() over (partition by id order by seq))
from your_table
) src
pivot ( max(title) for t in ([title 1],[title 2],[title 3]) )pt
pivot ( max(cat) for c in ([cat 1],[cat 2],[cat 3]) )pc
group by id, name;
I only wrote out title/cat 1 through 3 to save some space but you should get the idea.
Sample SQL Fiddle
Sample result:
| id | name | Title 1 | Cat 1 | Title 2 | Cat 2 | Title 3 | Cat 3 |
|----|------|---------|-------|---------|-------|---------|--------|
| 10 | John | Asst. | HR | Tutor | EDU | (null) | (null) |
| 11 | Sue | Mgr | PA | Adj. | EDU | Tutor | EDU |