I just read that there is a new T-SQL operator in town: STRING_AGG. Finally! Having worked with MySQL prior to moving (primarily) to Azure SQL DB, I have always missed a T-SQL equivalent to GROUP_CONCAT.

I’m happy to see that STRING_AGG has the same workings as GROUP_CONCAT. Both do not only concatenate string values, but also allow for injecting a ‘glue’ in between. Use is just as expected, a query such as

<pre>

SELECT STRING_AGG(DisplayName, ‘, ’) FROM Users WHERE AccountId = 45

</pre>

Will produce a single row result of

<pre>

Henry Been, John Doe

</pre>

Simply Awesome!