SQL Server: How to group rows by city?

Question

I'm able to get the set of rows by ascending time order. The columns I have are: artist name, action date and city name. The query looks as follows:

SELECT T_Action.Artist,
   T_ActionDates.ActionDate,
   T_City.Name
FROM   T_Action
   INNER JOIN T_ActionDates
        ON  T_Action.ID = T_ActionDates.ActionID
   INNER JOIN T_ActionPlace
        ON  T_Action.ActionPlaceID = T_ActionPlace.ID
   INNER JOIN T_City
        ON  T_ActionPlace.CityID = T_City.ID
WHERE  T_Action.ETicketEnabled = 1
   AND T_ActionDates.ActionDate >= GETDATE()
ORDER BY
   T_ActionDates.ActionDate

I should display this set of rows in ASP.NET repeater control, but they should be sorted by time and grouped by particular city separately. For example:

City1:

2013-01-01, Action1

2013-01-02, Action2

City2:

2013-02-01, Action1

2013-02-02, Action2

2013-02-03, Action3

And so on.

Can I do that in SQL directly or I should use the code behind to arrange the data? The preferred way is through SQL.

Answer 1

You will want to order your results by city then iterate over them yourself. So your ORDER BY is likely ORDER BY T_City.Name, T_ActionDates.ActionDate. Then you will need to intelligently iterate over them yourself to show your groupings.

SQL returns a single resultset per query with a set structure (i.e. it knows the columns ahead of time and calculates the row data). It won't do master-detail rows or anything like that. That's up to you.