The PIVOT keyword in SQL is specifically designed to convert data from a long format (where each row represents a single observation) to a wide format (where each row represents multiple observations across columns).

Key Points:

• PIVOT rotates data from rows to columns, aggregating values as needed
• TRANSFORM is not a standard SQL keyword for this purpose
• SUM is an aggregation function, not a format conversion operation
• CONVERT is typically used for data type conversions, not format restructuring
• WHERE is a filtering clause, not for data reshaping

In Databricks SQL and Spark SQL, PIVOT is the correct operation for converting long format data to wide format by specifying which column values should become new column headers.