Robert Sheldon The MERGE Statement in SQL Server 2008 When the SQL MERGE statement was introduced in SQL Server 2008, it allowed database programmers to replace reams of messy... 27 August 2010 14 min read
Robert Sheldon Implementing the OUTPUT Clause in SQL Server 2008 In retrospect, it was probably the inclusion of the OUTPUT clause in the MERGE statement that gave SQL Server 2008... 22 July 2010 17 min read
Robert Sheldon UPDATE Basics in SQL Server SQL Server's UPDATE statement is apparently simple, but complications such as the FROM clause can cause puzzlement. Bob Sheldon starts... 21 June 2010 17 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server APPLY Basics One of the most interesting additions to SQL Server syntax in SQL Server 2005 was the APPLY operator. It allows... 24 May 2010 12 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Common Table Expression (CTE) Basics The SQL Server common table expression was introduced into standard T-SQL to simplify queries for which a derived table just... 29 April 2010 11 min read
Paul Nielsen Switching rows and columns in SQL When they use SQL Server, one the commoner questions that Ms Access programmers ask is 'Where's the TRANSFORM/PIVOT command? So... 04 February 2010 4 min read
Robert Sheldon Working with the bcp Command-line Utility Even though there are many other ways to get data into a database, nothing works quite as fast as BCP,... 10 December 2009 35 min read
Anith Sen Five Simple Database Design Errors You Should Avoid Anith follows up his highly successful article Facts and Fallacies about First Normal Form with a fascinating discussion of five... 16 October 2009 18 min read
Plamen Ratchev Ten Common SQL Programming Mistakes It is not always easy to spot "antipatterns" in your SQL, especially in more complex queries. In this article, Plamen... 20 August 2009 28 min read
Pinal Dave Introduction to Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server 2008 Change Data Capture records INSERTs, UPDATEs, and DELETEs applied to SQL Server tables, and makes a record available of what... 03 August 2009 17 min read
Robert Sheldon Using the FOR XML Clause to Return Query Results as XML The FOR XML clause in SQL Server causes a lot of difficulty, mainly because it is rather poorly explained in... 27 May 2009 36 min read
András Belokosztolszki Removing Duplicates from a Table in SQL Server Sometimes, in SQL, it is the routine operations that turn out to be the trickiest for a DBA or developer.... 11 February 2009 13 min read
Phil Factor The TSQL of Text Files Phil returns to the old subject of 'Getting text-based data in and out of SQL Server'. He shows various easy... 19 January 2009 15 min read
Robert Sheldon Understanding Full-Text Indexing in SQL Server Microsoft has quietly been improving full-text indexing in SQL Server. It is time to take a good look at what... 29 December 2008 19 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Index Basics Given the fundamental importance of indexes in databases, it always comes as a surprise how often the proper design of... 25 November 2008 10 min read
Anith Sen Concatenating Row Values in Transact-SQL It is an interesting problem in Transact SQL, for which there are a number of solutions and considerable debate. How... 31 July 2008 17 min read
Nigel Rivett Identity Columns When Nigel Rivett takes us on a tour of the apparently innocuous subject of Identity Columns in TSQL, even the... 12 May 2008 12 min read
Phil Factor Reading and Writing Files in SQL Server using T-SQL SQL Server provides several "standard" techniques by which to read and write to files but, just occasionally, they aren't quite... 10 April 2007 10 min read
Keith Fletcher Creating Cross Tab Queries and Pivot Tables in SQL For those times when you absolutely, positively got to perform a cross tab query in SQL, Keith Fletcher's T-SQL stored... 27 March 2007 18 min read
Louis Davidson Ten Common Database Design Mistakes If database design is done right, then the development, deployment and subsequent performance in production will give little trouble. A... 26 February 2007 32 min read
