[ic] Way to [query] tall instead of wide?

[Paul Jordan]

Usually you can query select *, grab a bunch of fields, iterate over the 
results found. What if though, I wanted to a bunch of key-value pairs from a 
mess of rows?

As an example to grasp, let's say that all text on every page was editable. 
You're not going to make tables with a ton of awkward columns, you going to 
produce something like this (key omitted for brevity):

page_id     area_name      area_value
1                title                  My Designer Yoyo's
1                heading           Welcome to my......
1                email_link        Hit me up!
1                step_1_desc    To do step 1, just....
1                step 1_title       Do this first!
(Assume a multi-part uniqueness on page_id+area_name)

Is there some way to query this and still end up with: [sql-param title] 
[sql-param heading] and so on? The body would not loop of course.

I would have thought something like this would be common - does it exist? If 
not, what would you suggest... a new purpose-built query tag, and 
enhancement to [query], or something else?

I would think with something like this, with the correct query, one could 
not only easily make each page's text customizable (with generic fall back), 
but also build in a permission system with the addition to a user column. 
With just one efficient query, you end up with no need for either/or/if/else 
to achieve what I mentioned.

I am guessing something sort of similar is done with the [L] language stuff?

Thank you all for your thoughts.

Paul