11gR2 - LISTAGG

I was looking at the Oracle 11gR2 New Features guide and came across the new LISTAGG analytic function. Oh boy, oh boy! I've used Tom Kyte's stragg function for ages to do string concatenation of multiple row values. I'm way happy that that function is now "built in".

The syntax is:

LISTAGG (measure_expression [, 'delimiter_expression'])
WITHIN GROUP (order_by_clause) [OVER query_partition_clause]

Here are two examples from the docs:

SELECT LISTAGG(last_name, '; ') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY hire_date, last_name) "Emp_list",
    MIN(hire_date) "Earliest"
    FROM employees
    WHERE department_id = 30;

Emp_list                                                     Earliest
------------------------------------------------------------ ---------
Raphaely; Khoo; Tobias; Baida; Himuro; Colmenares            07-DEC-02



SELECT department_id "Dept.",
  LISTAGG(last_name, '; ')
   WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY hire_date) "Employees"
   FROM employees
   GROUP BY department_id;

Dept. Employees
------ ------------------------------------------------------------
    10 Whalen
    20 Hartstein; Fay
    30 Raphaely; Khoo; Tobias; Baida; Himuro; Colmenares
    40 Mavris
    50 Kaufling; Ladwig; Rajs; Sarchand; Bell; Mallin; Weiss; Davie
       s; Marlow; Bull; Everett; Fripp; Chung; Nayer; Dilly; Bissot
       ; Vollman; Stiles; Atkinson; Taylor; Seo; Fleaur; Matos; Pat
       el; Walsh; Feeney; Dellinger; McCain; Vargas; Gates; Rogers;
        Mikkilineni; Landry; Cabrio; Jones; Olson; OConnell; Sulliv
       an; Mourgos; Gee; Perkins; Grant; Geoni; Philtanker; Markle
    60 Austin; Pataballa; Lorentz; Ernst; Hunold
    70 Baer
... 

After I read it in the NF guide, I Googled and found lots more folks talking about it.

Cool stuff! No telling what else I'll find...better keep reading!