Formatting link lists using TSQL - sql-server

Question

Shog9 keeps on making my link lists look awesome.
Essentially, I write a bunch of queries that pull out results from the Stackoverflow data dump. However, my link lists look very ugly and are hard to understand.
Using some formatting magic Shog9 manages to make the link lists look a lot nicer.
So, for example, I will write a query that returns the following:
question id,title,user id, other info
4,When setting a form’s opacity should I use a decimal or double?,8,Eggs McLaren, some other stuff lots of text
And I want it to paste it into an answer on meta and make it look like this:
Question Id User Name Other Info
When setting a form’s opacity... Eggs Mclaren Some other stuff...
So assuming my starting point is the query that returns the start info.
What are the least amount of steps I can run in query analyser to turn the results into:
<h3> Question Id User Name Other Info </h3>
<pre>
When setting a form’s opacity... Eggs Mclaren Some other stuff...
</pre>
My initial thoughts are to insert the results into a temp table and then run a stored proc that will iron the data into my desired structure. Run the proc, cut and paste and be done.
Any candidate TSQL based solutions to this problem?
EDIT: Accepting my answer, its the only solution with an implementation.

Answer 1

Not sure of your exact requirements, but have you considered selecting the data as XML and then applying an XSLT transform to the results?

Answer 2

I'll update this post with my progress as I refine my proc:
Example:
select top 20
UserId = u.Id,
UserName = u.DisplayName,
u.Reputation,
sum(case when p.ParentId is null then 1 else 0 end) as Questions,
sum(case when p.ParentId is not null then 1 else 0 end) as Answers
into #t
from Users u
join Posts p on p.OwnerUserId = u.Id
where p.CommunityOwnedDate is null and p.ClosedDate is null
group by u.Id, u.DisplayName, u.Reputation
having sum(case when p.ParentId is not null then 1 else 0 end) < sum(case when p.ParentId is null then 1 else 0 end) / 6
order by Reputation desc
exec spShog9
Results:
User Reputation
Questions Answers
Edward Tanguay 8317 465 24
me 5767 311 29
Joan Venge 4844 226 14
Blankman 4546 310 1
acidzombie24 4359 371 32
Thanks 4350 416 21
Masi 4193 555 74
LazyBoy 3230 94 12
KingNestor 3187 92 11
Nick 2084 79 6
George2 1973 263 1
Xaisoft 1944 174 12
John 1929 160 24
danmine 1901 53 3
zsharp 1771 145 16
carrier 1742 56 8
JC Grubbs 1550 50 5
vg1890 1534 56 2
Coocoo4Cocoa 1514 143 0
Keand64 1513 83 5
Masi 4193 555 74
LazyBoy 3230 94 12
KingNestor 3187 92 11
Nick 2084 79 6
George2 1973 263 1
Xaisoft 1944 174 12
John 1929 160 24
danmine 1901 53 3
zsharp 1771 145 16
carrier 1742 56 8
JC Grubbs 1550 50 5
vg1890 1534 56 2
Coocoo4Cocoa 1514 143 0
Keand64 1513 83 5
The proc is on gist: http://gist.github.com/165544

Answer 3

You could do something like:
with
data (question_id,title,user_id, username ,other_info) as
(
select 4,'When setting a form''s opacity should I use a decimal or double?',8,'Eggs McLaren', 'some other stuff lots of text'
union all
select 5,'Another q title',9,'OtherUsername', 'some other stuff lots of text')
select
(select 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions/' + cast(question_id as varchar(10)) as [#href], title as [*] for xml path('a')) as questioninfo
,(select 'http://stackoverflow.com/users/' + cast(user_id as varchar(10)) + '/' + replace(username, ' ', '-') as [#href], username as [*] for xml path('a')) as userinfo
, other_info
from data
...but see how you go. I personally find that FOR XML PATH is very powerful for getting marked-up results in a way that suits me.
Rob