title: Optimal way to concatenate/aggregate strings
body: <p>I'm finding a way to aggregate strings from different rows into a single row. I'm looking to do this in many different places, so having a function to facilitate this would be nice. I've tried solutions using <code>COALESCE</code> and <code>FOR XML</code>, but they just don't cut it for me.</p>
  
  <p>String aggregation would do something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>id | Name                    Result: id | Names
  -- - ----                            -- - -----
  1  | Matt                            1  | Matt, Rocks
  1  | Rocks                           2  | Stylus
  2  | Stylus
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've taken a look at <a href="http://picnicerror.net/development/sql-server/concatenate-multiple-row-values-sql-server-with-clr-2012-01-10/">CLR-defined aggregate functions</a> as a replacement for <code>COALESCE</code> and <code>FOR XML</code>, but apparently <strong>SQL Azure</strong> <em>does not</em> support CLR-defined stuff, which is a pain for me because I know being able to use it would solve a whole lot of problems for me.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any possible workaround, or similarly optimal method (which might not be as optimal as CLR, but <em>hey</em> I'll take what I can get) that I can use to aggregate my stuff?</p>