Home Forums Article Discussions Article Discussions by Author Discuss Content Posted by Jeff Moden Solving the Running Total and Ordinal Rank Problems (Rewritten) RE: Solving the "Running Total" & "Ordinal Rank" Problems (Rewritten)

  • September 27, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    #1748644

    corey lawson (9/26/2014)

    I came across the Quirky Update initially just last week in one of Phil Factor's "Speed Phreak" challenges, where in the lengthy commentary regarding posted candidate solutions, someone did compare it against the upgraded partition functions in SQL Server 2012, and it's still faster. I wasn't looking for it in particular, but saw "quirky update", and had to find out more!

    It's hard to call this undocumented with all its "the evil" connotations people give this, when the syntax for this use of SET is right there in BOL (but not really explained well/in depth). This is a vestige from the mother code from Sybase, where it's probably been a standard, known speed-up for quite some time...

    (yes, the syntax for it still in BOL for the UPDATE statement for SQL Server 2014, but no examples)

    Awesome feedback, Corey. Thank you.

    --Jeff Moden

    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

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