Introduction to PIVOT Operator in SQL Server

The PIVOT operator in SQL server was introduced back in 2005. It is a powerful operator that is used to convert the rows of a table into columns. It is generally used to generate a summarized result set which makes it easy to analyze large datasets.

It is also used with aggregation functions like SUM(), AVG(), and COUNT() to summarize the data. For example, if you have multiple records of the same identity row then you can PIVOT the table to aggregate the results of the same row data into a single column.

We can also use the UNPIVOT operator to get the result set back in the normal form. Now that we have an understanding of the PIVOT operator let’s understand its syntax.

Syntax:

SELECT <non-pivoted column>,  

    [pivoted column1], [pivoted column2], ..., 
 
FROM  
    (SELECT <non-pivoted column>,  
        [pivoted column],  
        <value column>  
    FROM <source table>  

    ) AS <alias for the source subquery>  
PIVOT  
(  
    <aggregate function>(<value column>)  

FOR  
[<pivoted column>] IN ( [pivoted column1], [pivoted column2], ..., [pivoted columnN] )  

) AS <alias for the pivot table>

Explanation of Syntax:

• <non-pivoted column>: Columns that will remain unchanged in the result set. Select the columns here on which you don’t want to perform the PIVOT opeartions.

• [pivoted column1], [pivoted column2], : Name of the Columns you want to be pivoted.

• <value column>: The data that will be aggregated.

• <aggregate function>: The name of the function is declared here which will used for aggregation (e.g., SUM, AVG, COUNT).

SQL Server relational database management system. It has core functions that create, manipulate, and store data very efficiently. SQL Server contains all these characteristics and it has an extremely user-friendly installation interface, unlike other database servers that require extensive command-line configurations.

In this article, we are going to learn about the PIVOT operator in SQL Server. We will learn how we can use the Pivot operator with simple data sets, dynamic columns, and as well as with aggregate functions like AVG() and SUM().

PIVOT is a very effective tool if we are performing data analysis on a large data set and want to aggregate the row-based data to fetch meaningful results from them.