Keith Henry


Technical Article

Get contents of a directory/share to a table

Following on from todays QOD (on xp_cmdshell permissions) I thought this might be useful.Takes a directory or UNC path and returns the contents as a table.  eg:exec sp_getdir '\\mypc\c$'returns:datestring timestring directory   filesize    nameoffile---------- ---------- ----------- ----------- ----------------------18/07/2003 10:45      1           NULL        Documents and Settings18/07/2003 11:02    […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-09-04

269 reads

Technical Article

Convert float to duration-time string

This UDF is using in reporting where lots of durations are calculated, stored and then summed up and averaged for reports.  By storing the durations as floats (which are similar to the fixed point numbers datetimes are stored as) math functions are simpler.The problem is that float-times are not human readable, and cast(@floatime as datetime) […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-09-03

1,010 reads

Technical Article

Execute large sql (>8000 chars)

With a dynamic sql script under 4000 chars use sp_executesql With under 8000 chars write it to a variable.For anything longer you can use this script.  Use UpdateText and WriteText to write your dynamic sql to a text/ntext field in a table somewhere and then pass its location to this script.

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-09-01

613 reads

Technical Article

Prioritised list to table

I wrote this to allow me to send a priority list of int ids.This takes a "," seperated list of integers and puts them into a table, along with an [insorder] field that allows you to sort them.eg 2,6,3,1,7 becomesints insorder ---- --------1    72    13    56    37    9Depending on what […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2003-09-01

89 reads

Blogs

Advice I Like: Respect

By

“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...

Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap

By

Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...

Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work

By

If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About

By Terry Jago

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...

locking down agent for new user on our dev machine

By stan

hi , a new user wants to be able to add sql agent jobs...

SQL Server Enum Implementation: A Single-Row View Strategy for Avoiding Magic Values

By Ivica Borscak

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

BIT_COUNT I

In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:

UserID  UserPermissions
15
23
37
What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount
from dbo.UserPermission
where UserID = 3;

See possible answers