Miscellaneous

Technical Article

A faster way to count rows in a table

  • Script

SQL Server includes the COUNT function for counting a table's rows - however, it can be slow.  Although querying the "rows" column from the sysindexes table is faster, it is not always accurate (e.g., if a bulk load process has recently taken place).  In addition, you would not be able to use this method in […]

1.33 (3)

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2003-09-11

406 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Normalizing Dates

  • Article

Jon has been off in the land of C# and web apps for a while, but a recent project has him investigating OLAP and then coming up with a custom solution that met his needs. Jon helped us get this site off the ground, good to have him back for a guest appearance!

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2003-09-05

10,993 reads

Technical Article

Get contents of a directory/share to a table

  • Script

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    […]

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2003-09-04

259 reads

Technical Article

To Get Latest SQL Job Status

  • Script

This query will give you the current job status of all scheduled jobs on sql server. Just by using sysJobs, and sysJobHistory table you will get to know the details about the last status of the scheduled jobs, irrespective of their status like failed, successful, or cancelled.Note: You must have admin right on MSDB database […]

3.54 (13)

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2003-09-04

8,553 reads

Technical Article

Convert float to duration-time string

  • Script

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) […]

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2003-09-03

998 reads

Technical Article

Prioritised list to table

  • Script

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 […]

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2003-09-01

79 reads

Technical Article

Execute large sql (>8000 chars)

  • Script

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.

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2003-09-01

595 reads

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Question of the Day

The Maximum Value in the Identity Column

I have a table with this data:

TravelLogID CityID StartDate  EndDate
1           1      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
2           2      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
3           3      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
4           4      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
5           5      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
I run this code:
SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('TravelLog')
I get the value 5 back. Now I do this:
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.TravelLog ON
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
    TravelLogID,
CityID,
    StartDate,
    EndDate
)
VALUES
(25, 5, '2025-09-12', '2025-09-17')
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.TravelLog OFF
I now run this code.
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
    CityID,
    StartDate,
    EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-10-14', '2025-10-17')
GO
What is the value for TravelLogID for the row I inserted for CityID 4 and dates starting on 14 Oct 2025?  

See possible answers