Validating Canadian Postal Codes

For fellow Canadians and neighbours to the south, you may find useful a function to validate the formatting of a Canadian postal code.  More than once I've had to work with web programmers on checking that a postal code meets the A1A1A1 style, so carry around a function that simply returns a true/false bit if […]

What the heck does ATN2 do?

You have installed a US English SQL Server...

What does this return?

declare @i int
select @i = -5
select...

Check and Set Default file Locations with TSQL

Checks the default file locations for your data and log files. If not set, it sets them to the specified values. This is written for a SQL 2005 default instance. Registry paths may be different for SQL 2000 or named instances.The script can be easily modified to update it if the current value is set […]

Usages of CONTEXT_INFO

How many of you have ever used SET CONTEXT_INFO in your SQL Server applications? Chances are it is not something you have been exposed to, but new author Yousef Ekhtiari brings us an example of how this particular construct can be used in your application.

What are the three possible functions of the...

insert mytable select ''
insert mytable select ' '
select * from...

Joining Tables Part 1

In this video for beginners you'll begin to learn how to write queries that use more than one table using T-SQL. Kathi walks you through common tactics to efficiently pull out data from a normalized system.

What does a @@fetch_status of -2 mean in...