A Function Gotcha with the Use of an Asterisk
This article describes and demonstrates the problem of using asterisk to select all fields from a table within a table function. (from Apr 2008)
2009-09-11 (first published: 2008-04-30)
18,716 reads
Stephen Lasham
- Interests: Photography
Converting Hexadecimal String Values to Alpha (ASCII) Strings
In an interesting exercise in data conversion, Stephen Lasham brings us a nice article on basic manipulations.
2008-04-25 (first published: 2007-05-17)
13,032 reads
Finding Gaps in a Sequential Number Sequence
Do you use identity values? Do missing values ever cause problems? Maybe you need to look for missing invoices? Stephen Lasham brings us a technique for finding those missing values in a sequence.
2006-04-03
14,744 reads
Reporting a menu structure using a recursive UDF
Selecting a menu structure from a series of tables is pretty easy. If you bound the number of levels in the menu. However if you have potentially variable numbers of levels. Stephen Lasham brings us a new piece on using recursion to select the data.
2005-10-11
8,827 reads
Extracting a String Within Delimeters - Part 2
T-SQL can be a complex language to work within and code solutions with. Author Stephen Lasham brings us a twist on his last solution of extracting a string from within another string. Read about his method of working with strings in T-SQL.
2004-09-13
7,863 reads
Extracting a String From Between Two Delimiting Characters
String manipulation in SQL Server or T-SQL can be a challenage. There are multiple ways to accomplish every task and often learning a new one may spark some creativity in yourself or teach you a better way to accomplish an old task. New Author Stephen Lasham brings us his technique for extracting a string that is delimited from within a larger string. Something I'm sure we'll all have use for in the future.
2004-06-14
23,404 reads
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
locking down agent for new user on our dev machine
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
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
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 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers