There is nothing wrong with using a function in a stored proc nowadays. However, there have always been issues with substituting subqueries with scalar functions that included...

I find it helpful to think of OUTER APPLY as being similar to a LEFT JOIN.

When you use a CROSS APPLY, if the applied function (or query) returns no rows,...

Why is dynamic SQL not an option here?

CREATE TABLE #T1 (cat1 char(1), cat2 char(1),cat3 char(1), cat4 char(1))

CREATE TABLE #T2 (cat1 char(1), cat2 char(1),cat3 char(1), cat4 char(1))

INSERT INTO #T1

SELECT 'A', 'B','C','D' UNION ALL

SELECT 'A', 'B','C','D' UNION ALL

SELECT 'A',...

DECLARE @date DATE = getdate()

SELECT DATEADD(DAY,7-DATEPART(dw,@date),@date)

Just substitute your date column for @date in the DATEADD function.

The DATEPART() function with the 'dw' parameter returns the day of the week (1-7) for...

BCP is not the tool for importing EXCEL spreadsheets. It works on common text files. However you could save your spreadsheet as a CSV...

Alvin Ramard (3/29/2011)

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CirquedeSQLeil (3/29/2011)

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jcrawf02 (3/29/2011)

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CirquedeSQLeil (3/29/2011)

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jcrawf02 (3/29/2011)

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Kiara, happens to me all the time. That's why I like hanging out with people smarter than me (and Alvin), some of it rubs...

Thanks for the reply, Rajesh. Glad that's working for you, even though the function has a (shudder) WHILE loop in it. 🙂

Three questions:

1) Is there a maximum string length?

2) Is there a maximum number of output elements?

3) Do you want the spaces before and after the <> symbols trimmed?

This is one of those jobs where I have nothing against a cursor, or a while loop, because you are doing the same operation against multiple TABLES, as opposed to...

CirquedeSQLeil (3/17/2011)

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Brandie Tarvin (3/17/2011)

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CRAIG!

Stop giving me...

Grant Fritchey (3/16/2011)

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Jeff Moden (3/16/2011)

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Craig Farrell (3/16/2011)

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Isn't that like saying you're a 'nice' barbarian because...

FULL OUTER JOINS are very useful when comparing two sets of data and you want to identify items that exist in one set but not in another. ...

Congratulations, Paul. It's a good read.

I was a little bored, so I'm going to throw a fish...

declare @sample table (class Char(1), value int)

insert into @sample

select 'A',3 union all

select 'A',19 union all

select 'B',8 union all

select 'A',3...