Jason-299789 (1/8/2013)
Nice Alternative dwain, love the use of cross applys with the tally and inline month generator, as well as the normalisation of the month to always be the first.
Thank you sir!
For some reason, I get a lot of pushback around here when I suggest using an actual Calendar table and I'm not sure why. I've even developed a nifty GenerateCalendar FUNCTION (that Jeff Moden took pity on and improved to warp speed) to take its place. Thought that was a bit much to post on this question although the technique is not dissimilar.
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?
My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.
Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
[url url=http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/St