STUFF is actually needed in the database layer to not kill performance of your app. SQL server has no built in convenience function the equivalent of mysql's GROUP_CONCAT. Instead, you do a subquery in the selected field, interpret it as XML, pull out the specific XML elements you are looking for as a list, and then use STUFF to join them.

As much as you might recoil in horror at this (and I still do), it's actually fairly performant because the optimizer recognizes the subquery is dependent on the main query, and does the equivalent of a join under the covers or something.

E.g.

    # MSSQL
    SELECT
      movie.id,
      movie.name,
      STUFF( (SELECT ','+producer.last_name FROM actor WHERE producer.movie_id = movie.id FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE).value('.', 'NVARCHAR(32)'),
    FROM movie;

    # MySQL
    SELECT
      movie.id,
      movie.name,
      GROUP_CONCAT(producer.last_name),
    FROM movie
      LEFT JOIN producer ON movie.id = producer.movie_id