Need to display a group by month

Question

i need to group my data by month, there are some dates that dont exist
i am using a date field but doenst contain every month.
i need to display jan, feb etc even if the date doesnt exist in the field
any ideas???

Answer 1

To actually make it useful you will need to join it to your original data set. Unfortunately, you probably don't have the "MonthNumber" anywhere in your original data set, making a direct link impossible... as it is now.
So to carry the example out into something useful... (again for SQL Server... And using the AdventureWorks sample database)
IF object_id('tempdb..#Temp') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
   DROP TABLE #Temp
END
CREATE TABLE #Temp (Number INT, MonthName VarChar(20))
INSERT INTO #Temp (Number, MonthName) Values (1, 'January')
WHILE (SELECT MAX(Number) FROM #Temp) < 12
BEGIN
     INSERT INTO #Temp (Number, MonthName) SELECT MAX(Number)+1, DateName(mm,DateAdd(mm,MAX(Number),0)) FROM #Temp
END
SELECT
c.FirstName,
c.LastName,
c.ModifiedDate,
t.Number,
t.MonthName
FROM #Temp AS t
LEFT OUTER JOIN Person.Contact AS c
  ON t.Number = DatePart(mm,c.ModifiedDate)
ORDER BY c.ModifiedDate
DROP TABLE #Temp
... which will produce results like this...
FirstName     LastName     ModifiedDate          Number     MonthName
David          Wruck          1999-01-31 00:00:00.000     1     January
Candy          Spoon          1999-01-31 00:00:00.000     1     January
Jane          Parkinson     1999-01-31 00:00:00.000     1     January
Nuan          Yu          1999-01-31 00:00:00.000     1     January
Bjorn          Rettig          1999-02-01 00:00:00.000     2     February
Manoj          Syamala          1999-02-01 00:00:00.000     2     February
William          Vong          1999-02-01 00:00:00.000     2     February
Marie          Reinhart     1999-02-01 00:00:00.000     2     February
Hope this helps,
Jason