Purging Data from a Large Table in SQL Server

Purging data from a table is a common database maintenance task to prevent it from growing too large or to stay in compliance with data retention. When dealing with small amounts of data, this can be accomplished by a simple delete with no issues; however, with larger tables, this task can be problematic. Deleting records requires a lock that can block other processes from writing or even reading the data (depending on your isolation level). In this article I will share a technique I have used to work with some very large tables.

How Many Nested Triggers?

Calculating Month End

CONCAT_WS

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SQL STRING_AGG Function Use and Examples

The STRING_AGG function concatenates strings separated by a specified separator. This was introduced with SQL Server 2017.

SQL ASCII Function Use and Examples

The ASCII function is used to return the ASCII value for the first character in a string.

Evaluating the Randomness of SQL Server Random Number Functions

Microsoft provides T-SQL developers with three functions (rand, newid, and crypt_gen_random) for generating random numbers. Each of these functions is effective at returning random values, but feature sets associated with each function make them best suited to different use cases. This tip’s Solution section presents an overview of common use cases for random numbers in SQL Server along with references to learn more about random numbers in SQL Server.

Date and Time Calculations Made Easy with EOMONTH, DATEDIFF, and DATEADD

Learn how to work with dates and calculate particular dates or elapsed time periods with some of the functions available in SQL Server.

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