MySQL - Creating Crosstabs

Creating Crosstabs in MySQL
Roland Bouman's blog: Creating Crosstabs in MySQL:
In some cases, it would be very nice to be able to get a crosstab result from a query. You can't really do that in MySQL, at least not directly; as matter of fact, you can't do it in most rdbms-es (Interestingly, MS Access does have a language construct for crosstabs: TRANSFORM..., PIVOT...)
If you really need a crosstab, here are some techniques that might be of use. I'll illustrate them using the updated version of the sakila database. I really think the following stuff will be a lot more fun if you download and install this database first. If you think that's too much of a hassle, then just open the diagram of this database in a new window to help you understand queries.