Generating lists of data is a common task with a wide variety of use-cases. Perhaps you want to output data to an application or file with a specific formatting or syntax. Maybe the best format to read a list of data is in a single line, rather than a tabular format. Maybe you want to store data in a table using a particular string format that needs to be quickly built prior to storing it.
While this is not an often-advertised feature of SQL Server, it is one that can be implemented in ways that perform quite well. Alternatively, it is very easy to concoct list generation in ways that are unbelievably inefficient. ...
