Specialized tasks like cryptography require external libraries that are not available in SQL Server. Methods for such tasks can be compiled in a .NET language and deployed to SQL Server as a CLR assembly where the assembly's methods can be referenced by SQL Server stored procedures and functions.  Read more...

Fill in another bit of your T-SQL knowledge by learning how to sort a result set by the proper month order, but use the month name instead.  Read more...

Not all SQL-generated scripts are created equal (or correctly) for alternative schema-owned objects.  Read more...

Understanding thousands of lines of code of an existing database is very time-consuming and tedious, prone to inadvertent oversight of key logic points. We are looking at advanced ways to provide greater insight into your code base while reducing the numerous demands placed on the developer. Please help us by completing this short survey to help us define the requirements.  Read more...

Learn how to generate lists of column values from multiple rows by grouping and using a recursive CTE. This is a very flexible and easy implementation, compared to using cursors or PIVOT operators.  Read more...

Make your comment blocks much more useful, in a surprising number of ways  Read more...

SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden shows us a quick and dirty bit of SQL Spackle to display the content of VARCHAR(MAX) and NVARCHAR(MAX).  Read more...

Understanding the basics of how T-SQL logic works in branching is important to ensure you code works as expected. This article will help you learn how this impacts control of flow language.   Read more...

Create a professional looking HTML table from T-SQL, not SSRS.  Read more...

This article shows how to implement low cost custom sequence numbering logic via a cunning use of the the ROW_NUMBER() function  Read more...

Greg Larsen shares a number of different TSQL methods to provide paging functionality, for when your application requires that you display only one page of data at a time.  Read more...

Greg Larsen shares a number of different TSQL methods to provide paging functionality, for when your application requires that you display only one page of data at a time.  Read more...

How to render PDF documents using SQL CLR. Also a good introduction on creating SQL CLR functions.  Read more...

What should you do if your first, most intuitive solution to a problem ends up scanning the data more than is necessary, resulting in poor performance? Have you missed a new SQL Server feature that can remove inefficiency from your technique? Alternatively, do you need a little help, and some lateral thinking, to open the path to a different approach? Sometimes, the answer is "both".  Read more...

This article describes a technique of using FULL JOINs to compare two datasets within a numerical tolerance.  Read more...

When converting Oracle PL/SQL to T-SQL, there are a number of ways to do this, but this article shows us how this can be done with regular expressions in Management Studio.  Read more...

Beginning to learn and comprehend SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) MDX queries can be difficult after one has spent years writing queries in T-SQL. When trying to write SQL Server MDX queries, it's worth considering "How would I write this query in T-SQL?"   Read more...

What's this, a conditional WHERE clause that doesn't use dynamic SQL?  Read more...

An old trick nowadays but one which is still underused here on SSC is the cascading CROSS APPLY – where output from one CROSS APPLY is used as input for another.  Read more...

When you write T-SQL code what kind of coding style do you use? Do you have a consistent way to comment and format your code? Does your organization provide standards for how you must code your T-SQL? Join Greg Larsen as he discusses some of the coding styles you should consider when writing your T-SQL scripts and stored procedures.  Read more...