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Selecting Data Using the TOP Clause

There are times when you don’t what to return a complete set of records. When you have this kind of requirement to only select the TOP X number of items Transact SQL (TSQL) has the TOP clause to meet your needs. In this article Greg Larsen explores how to select a subset of data from a record set.

2015-04-16

9,580 reads

External Article

SQL Server Spatial Indexes

Spatial Data in SQL Server has special indexing because it has to perform specialised functions. It is able, for example, to break down an indexed space into a grid hierarchy by using a technique called tessellation. This is a rules-based system that, when you compare a shape to an index, works out how many cells in the the grid hierarchy are touched by that shape , and how deep down the grid hierarchy to search. There is powerful magic in Spatial Indexes as Surenda and Roy explain.

2015-04-15

7,242 reads

External Article

Never Ignore a Sort Warning in SQL Server

It is always bad news if your SQL queries are having to use the SORT operator. It is worse news if you get a warning that sort operations are spilling onto TempDB. If you have a busy, slow TempDB, then the effect on performance can be awful. You should check your query plans to try to eliminate SORTs and never leave a SORT warning unheeded. Fabiano Amorim shows the range of ways of getting information on what is going on with a query that is doing a SORT and when requests are made for memory.

2015-04-13

8,822 reads

External Article

The Internet of Things: A New World Order?

Was the marketing hook 'The Internet of Things' conjured up before the technical definition? Are we being persuaded to spend money on fending off yet another fantasy tsunami of data? Already, we have televisions that listen to, and report, your conversations; so are we facing the Science Fiction future of gadgets that report where you go, who you visit and what medications you take? As Robert Sheldon says; "It's big, almost too big to get your arms around".

2015-04-10

11,037 reads

External Article

Painless Refactoring of SQL Server Database Objects

Refactoring a database object can often cause unexpected behavior in the code that accesses that object. In this article, adapted from his excellent book, Defensive Database Programming with SQL Server, Alex Kuznetsov discusses several techniques that will harden your code, so that it will not break, or behave unpredictably, as a result such changes.

2015-04-08

11,414 reads

External Article

Introduction to SQL Server Spatial Data

More and more applications require the handling of geospatial data. It is easy to store spatial data, but it takes rather more thought to retrieve and manipulate it. Tasks like searching neighborhoods, and calculating distances between points is often required from databases. But how do you start? Roy and Surenda take you through the basics.

2015-04-06

9,426 reads

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Question of the Day

Creating JSON III

In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:

BeerIDBeerName
1Becks
2Fat Tire
3Mac n Jacks
4Alaskan Amber
8Kirin
I run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
    BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results?

See possible answers