Concatenating SQL row data into a string

Hi
I have a table that has (lets say) the following data

Field 1 Field 2
1 abc
1 def
1 ghi
2 jkl
2 mno
2 pqr

I want the results from this table in this format with an SQL query

Field 1 Field 2
1 abc, def, ghi
2 jkl, mno, pqr
..Basically I want to get the concatenation of the row values in Field 2 grouped by Field 1.
I'd like to know how to accomplish this without using cursors.
Thanks in advance

why can't you use cursors?

My table size is very huge and using cursors may be a bit inefficient.
I guess I can accomplish this without using cursors if I use a User-defined function in the select query and use group by in it
that is something like..

select dbo.GetField2Data(Field1), Field1
from <tablename> group by Field1

and in the UDF I can say something like

declare @var1 as varchar(1000)
declare @ret as varchar(2000)
Set @var1=''
select @var1 = @var1 + Field1 + ',' from <tablename>
if len(@var1) >0
Set @ret = substring(@var1,1,len(@var1)-1)
else
set @ret = ''
return @ret

but the problem again with that is that it may be inefficient. Also I cannot use User Defined Functions with temporary tables which I do need to use anyways.

I was wondering if there is any variant of the sum function (as in numeric values) for string values.

Any ideas ??

the way it sounds i think that using cursors would be more efficient than creating a new table and trying to handle the UDT.