We're pleased to announce that Robert will be writing for us each month - generally on stored procedures, but occasionally on a different topic. This article discusses how nesting stored procedures works and how to use @@NextLevel. Good reading! If there is a stored procedure topic you'd like to see covered, add a comment to the article or email us at articles@sqlservercentral.com   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary!   Read more...

We're pleased to announce that Robert will be writing for us each month - generally on stored procedures, but occasionally on a different topic. This article discusses how nesting stored procedures works and how to use @@NextLevel. Good reading! If there is a stored procedure topic you'd like to see covered, add a comment to the article or email us at articles@sqlservercentral.com   Read more...

Robert is back this week with a look at the text data type. Not the easiest thing to work with, but sometimes a varchar just doesn't give you the range you need.   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

A monster book at 980 pages, it's written in 'how-to' format and has a ton of good material. Andy gave it the once over for us and reports back - see what he thinks!   Read more...

Are you using default values for your parameters? Using named parameters when you call the proc or passing the values by ordinal? Should you be? Andy thinks 6 out of 10 of our readers will agree with his point of view, we'll be a little more conservative and guess that 5 of out 10 will be closer.   Read more...

In this article, James Travis covers a common performance topic of prefixing stored procedures sp_. Does it really slow down performance?   Read more...

Andy sits down with an entry level book to see if he should use it at work as a teaching aid. Did he like it? Should you buy it? Read the review now!   Read more...

Building and executing dynamic sql in a stored procedure - is it the only way to solve problems like supporting a simple search function? Leon offers a couple alternatives that let you continue to provide the functionality in a stored procedure without using dynamic sql. Interesting ideas worth exploring!   Read more...

Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary!   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

Robert is back this week with a look at the text data type. Not the easiest thing to work with, but sometimes a varchar just doesn't give you the range you need.   Read more...

We're pleased to announce that Robert will be writing for us each month - generally on stored procedures, but occasionally on a different topic. This article discusses how nesting stored procedures works and how to use @@NextLevel. Good reading! If there is a stored procedure topic you'd like to see covered, add a comment to the article or email us at articles@sqlservercentral.com   Read more...