Articles

External Article

Clean unused space when a variable-length column is dropped from a SQL Server table or indexed view

Whenever rows or columns are deleted from a table, SQL Server reuses space to accommodate new data. However, this is not the case when a variable length column is deleted. The space used by this type of column is not reclaimed automatically. Variable length columns can be of data types varchar, nvarchar, varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary, varbinary(max), text, ntext, image, sql_variant, and xml. In this tip, I have tried to put forth a solution to reclaim this space and this should work for SQL 2005 and later versions.

2011-04-18

3,911 reads

Technical Article

SQL Transparent Hierarchical Processing of Relational, XML and IMS Data

The SQL-92 standard introduced the LEFT Outer Join operation which offers a powerful alternative to standard relational processing to perform full hierarchical processing naturally and inherently. This enables SQL to transparently integrate relational data with XML, IMS and other forms of legacy hierarchical data. This can also allow the so far overlooked integration of IMS and legacy data with the Internet and XML, and visa versa.

2011-04-15

3,437 reads

External Article

Send email in a tabular format using SQL Server database mail

Some of our SQL Servers contain tables with summarized data (summarized on a weekly / monthly / quarterly basis). Previously this data was emailed as a flat file attachment to the recipients. I was asked to convert this in such a way that the email itself contains the table data. This way the recipients would be able to look at the data in a tabular format, making it easier for readability. Hence we arrived at the question of how to send email from SQL Server with data in a tabular format.

2011-04-12

5,799 reads

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Question of the Day

Identities and Sequences III

When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which can be used with the BIGINT data type?

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