sum range of columns SQL

Question

I'm using SQL Server 2016. Suppose I have columns sales1, sales2,..,sales100 in a dataset, along with some other column, say name. I want to write a SQL query like

SELECT name, SUM(sales1), SUM(sales2),..., SUM(sales100)
FROM dataset
GROUP BY name

but I don't believe this is valid SQL syntax.. Is there a shorthand to do this?

Answer 1

There is no shorthand, but SSMS provides a simple way to do this.

From Object Explorer expand your table and drag the column folder to a query window. 
It will give you a csv list of columns.

Oh, but that is not what you wanted!

Replace ',' with '), SUM(' and with minor tweaking you can have the desired string. 

Or you could try this:

DECLARE @SQL VARCHAR(MAX) = ''
SELECT @SQL += 'SUM(' + column_name + '), ' 
FROM information_Schema.COLUMNS 
WHERE table_name = 'mytable' 
AND column_name LIKE 'sales%'
ORDER BY ORDINAL_POSITION
SELECT @SQL