In my previous tip, Pagination Performance in SQL Server, I showed how to make SQL pagination more predictable – turning O(n) into O(1). I materialized and cached row numbers to page through instead of calculating them on every request. It wasn’t the whole story, though; real pagination queries rarely get to sort without filtering. Users always want more control, and filtering can threaten that predictability.
2026-02-06
Continuing with Steve Jones series on string manipulation, this article looks at an interesting facet of the SELECT operator.
2026-02-05 (first published: 2001-07-04)
9,063 reads
Continuing Steve Jones' series on string manipulation in T-SQL, this article examines how quotations are handled in T-SQL.
2026-02-05 (first published: 2004-03-25)
9,144 reads
Steve Jones continues his series on string manipulation. This articles examines the issues of quotes when implementing dynamic SQL.
2026-02-05 (first published: 2002-04-04)
7,746 reads
2026-02-04 (first published: 2026-02-03)
132 reads
In this article by Steve Jones, he shows you how to manipulate strings.
2026-02-04 (first published: 2004-04-05)
17,990 reads
The second part of Steve Jones's series on programming and manipulating strings in T-SQL.
2026-02-04 (first published: 2002-05-31)
15,913 reads
The third part of Steve Jones's series on programming and manipulating strings in T-SQL dealing with REPLACE.
2026-02-04 (first published: 2001-04-18)
17,255 reads
This is another part in my series designed to offer guidance around common issues in SQL Server. Today, let’s talk about the all-too-common error: invalid length.
2026-02-04
The fourth part of Steve Jones's series on programming and manipulating strings in T-SQL dealing with numeric conversions.
2026-02-03 (first published: 2001-04-18)
9,745 reads
When I put together the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #202, I wasn't sure what...
By Steve Jones
My life has some crazy travel stretches for sure. Between speaking, office visits, customer...
In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Server-Level Table sizes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...
There is a table tmp_tab:
CREATE TABLE tmp_tab ( id int, val int );
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES (1, 1), (2, NULL), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5);You want to order the rows ids by the following expression:
ISNULL(val, id) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers