Trying to create a pivot in Oracle 10.2.0.4

Question

I have the following query that pulls data from three tables, SORPCOL, SORDEGR and STVSBGI. SORPCOL houses prior college info for certain applicants for admissions, SORDEGR houses degree information, including the associated GPA at prior colleges, and STVSBGI is a validation table housing the institution codes and names of colleges.
SELECT SORPCOL_PIDM,
SORPCOL_SBGI_CODE,
STVSBGI_DESC,
SORPCOL_TRANS_RECV_DATE,
SORPCOL_TRANS_REV_DATE,
SORPCOL_ADMR_CODE,
SORPCOL_ACTIVITY_DATE,
SORDEGR_GPA_TRANSFERRED,
SORDEGR_HOURS_TRANSFERRED
FROM SORPCOL, SORDEGR, STVSBGI
WHERE SORPCOL_PIDM=123456
AND SORPCOL_SBGI_CODE NOT IN ('CUMGPA')
AND SORPCOL_PIDM=SORDEGR_PIDM
AND SORPCOL_SBGI_CODE=SORDEGR_SBGI_CODE
AND SORPCOL_SBGI_CODE=STVSBGI_CODE
The output I get from this is fine, and is as follows:
PIDM     SBGI     STVSBGI_DESC     TRANS_RECV_DATE TRANS_REV_DATE ADMR     ACTIVITY_DATE     SORDEGR_GPA_TRANSFERRED     SORDEGR_HOURS_TRANSFERRED
123456     008000     Unknown College     10/07/2011 00:00:00          CLT1     10/07/2011 09:39:50     0.750     
123456     008002     Unknown College Two     10/07/2011 00:00:00          CLT1     10/07/2011 09:39:50     1.800
Each applicant may have multiple prior colleges, but there is not a set maximum number of prior institutions they can have. The only thing in SORPCOL that might be a unique identifier is the SBGI code, but that would be different for each prior college, per pidm, and there are 8500 different college codes in STVSBGI, of which an applicant could have any one of them. There is not a field in SORPCOL or SORDEGR that creates a number to associate with each prior college, either, such as 1, 2, 3, etc. They want this programmed to pull up to 10 prior colleges. If I can get help doing the first two, I think I could figure out how to add more.
What the user wants the output to look like is this:
PIDM COLL 1 CODE     COLL 1 DESC COLL 1 TR RECV DT COLL 1 TR REV DT COLL 1 ADMR COLL 1 ACT DATE COLL 1 GPA XFR COLL 1 HR XFER COLL 2 CODE COLL 2 DESC     COLL 2 TR RECV DT COLL 2 TR REV DT COLL 2 ADMR     COLL 2 ACT DATE COLL 2 GPA XFR     COLL 2 HR XFER
123456 008000     Unknown College 10/7/2011     CLT1     10/7/2011     0.750     008002     Unknown Coll 2     10/7/2011          CLT1     10/7/2011     1.800     
Does anyone have any suggestions on how this might be accomplished? It seems in Oracle 11 that it wouldn't be too difficult, but I don't know about 10.2.0.4.
Thanks so much,
Michelle

Answer 1

I actually listed all of the things you mentioned in my original post. The existing query, which pulls the data into columns, is given, including the relevant fields from each of the tables, along with a description of what happens when the query is run. It basically returns all of the prior colleges that have been entered into the database for an applicant and puts them into neat columns. I showed the results in the original post, but the formatting didn't keep after the item was posted. If there were multiple PIDMs (the unique identifier in our database), To retain the formatting of code and sample data you need to use the {noformat}{noformat} tag before and after the text you want to preserve the formatting of.  Having said that, the sample data you have provided does not seem to match the list of columns you have supplied.  I only see 7 columns worth of data per row but there 8 columns listed - and the data types don't appear to match the names of the columns...PIDM SBGI STVSBGI_DESC TRANS_RECV_DATE TRANS_REV_DATE ADMR ACTIVITY_DATE SORDEGR_GPA_TRANSFERRED SORDEGR_HOURS_TRANSFERRED
123456 008000 Unknown College 10/07/2011 00:00:00 CLT1 10/07/2011 09:39:50 0.750
123456 008002 Unknown College Two 10/07/2011 00:00:00 CLT1 10/07/2011 09:39:50 1.800
A much more user friendly way to present this data is either to supply a create table statement along with insert statements
i.e.create table SORPCOL
create table SORDEGR
create table STVSBGI
insert into SORPCOL values(...)
That way it is very easy for people to run the statements on their own systems an play with the results.  It's generally the fastest way to get an answer to your question because you're removing the things that prevent people being able to run your sql.
HTH
David