Transform a string result table from rows to columns

How could I transform a table that looks like this:

to this

dynamically.

I tried pivoting it, but PIVOT tables are designed to aggregate the results. Using

max(entity) for colname in ('+ @columns +') 

only results in one entity shown under each topic.

>Solution :

If you number the rows with ROW_NUMBER(), PIVOT is an option. The important part here is how do you expect to order the rows.

Sample data:

SELECT *
INTO Data
FROM (VALUES  
   ('topic01', 'T_pitch'),
   ('topic01', 'T_someg'),
   ('topic02', 'T_gold'),
   ('topic02', 'sp_gpdf'),
   ('topic02', 'T_someg'),
   ('topic03', 'sp_gpdf2')
) v (colname, entity)  

Statement for static PIVOT:

SELECT [topic01], [topic02], [topic03]
FROM (  
   SELECT colname, entity, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY colname ORDER BY entity) AS rn
   FROM Data
) t
PIVOT (
   MAX(entity) FOR colname IN ([topic01], [topic02], [topic03])
) p 

Results: