Depending on your age, you may not want to know this number, but as you advance in your career, this might be a problem that you look to solve one day. Peter Larsson takes a few minutes to work out a function in T-SQL that can be used to solve this or any similar question.
2006-07-19
14,202 reads
The latest puzzle craze seems to be Sudoko with all kinds of online puzzles, books, etc. appearing around the world. Longtime SQL Server guru David Poole decided solving the puzzles was not enough of a challenge and brings us some T-SQL to help solve those difficult ones keeping you from getting back to work.
2006-06-22
17,665 reads
You can build very powerful and flexible text-formatting solutions in SQL Server. Learn how to apply techniques that handle the simplest to the more complex text-formatting tasks.
2006-06-20
3,557 reads
One of the seeminly more popular enhancements in SQL Server 2005 to T-SQL is the PIVOT operator. There have been quite a few articles, but new author Peter Larsson decomposes in detail how you can perform this operation with previous versions.
2007-10-02 (first published: 2006-06-12)
75,988 reads
Working with outer joins can be tricky since the syntax doesn't always appear to make sense. Grant Fritchey brings us a great example of how this confusion can cause issues if you use the old style syntax.
2006-05-15
15,142 reads
Processing text or long strings usually reduces SQL to a prosaic procedural language. Learn a few techniques for facilitating speedy text processing in SQL.
2006-05-10
5,032 reads
After introducing us to a comprehensive encryption toolkit in part I, Michael Coles delves into Regular Expressions and the functions included in the toolkit for use on SQL Server 2000.
2007-10-03 (first published: 2006-04-20)
21,311 reads
What is the most efficient way of generating a range of values? SQL Server guru David Poole takes a look at a few different methods, both procedural and set based, and gives you some performance results.
2006-04-12
10,503 reads
The aggregate functions in SQL Server (min, max, sum, count, average, etc.) are great tools for reporting and business analysis. But sometimes, you need to tweak them just a little bit to get exactly the results you need. For example, if your manager came to you and asked for a report on how many sales have been made to your clients and how large they were, would you know how to get the data you need efficiently? Mark ran into something like this recently and here's the approach he took to solve the problem.
2006-01-25
3,507 reads
In the days when I contentedly cut procedural code, I was puzzled by the visceral rages of the database specialists; they were like the ship’s cook occasionally going berserk with a meat-cleaver. After I switched to database work, I realized why.”
2006-01-02
3,504 reads
By SQLPals
Dry-run xp_delete_file Before Actually Deleting Files? xp_delete_file doesn’t really have a...
By Brian Kelley
In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. The intent behind the holiday is to...
SQL Server 2025 RTM is here, and if you’re running Docker on macOS, you...
Apologies if this is posted in the wrong forum, but I am trying to...
Hello all, I have a linked server created on an instance which only has...
Hi, I want to find all the tables name under a database where tables...
In Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2025, if I run this, what is returned?
SELECT '[' + SUBSTRING('Steve Jones', 7) + ']' See possible answers