SQLServerCentral Editorial

Careful Blogging

This editorial was originally published on Sept 22, 2005. Steve Jones talks about the dangers of blogging about your job and with your company. Be sure that you are aware of what the impact of your posts will be on your image.

External Article

Clean unused space when a variable-length column is dropped from a SQL Server table or indexed view

Whenever rows or columns are deleted from a table, SQL Server reuses space to accommodate new data. However, this is not the case when a variable length column is deleted. The space used by this type of column is not reclaimed automatically. Variable length columns can be of data types varchar, nvarchar, varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary, varbinary(max), text, ntext, image, sql_variant, and xml. In this tip, I have tried to put forth a solution to reclaim this space and this should work for SQL 2005 and later versions.

Technical Article

SQL Transparent Hierarchical Processing of Relational, XML and IMS Data

The SQL-92 standard introduced the LEFT Outer Join operation which offers a powerful alternative to standard relational processing to perform full hierarchical processing naturally and inherently. This enables SQL to transparently integrate relational data with XML, IMS and other forms of legacy hierarchical data. This can also allow the so far overlooked integration of IMS and legacy data with the Internet and XML, and visa versa.

Blogs

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Forums

SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About

By Terry Jago

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...

Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments

By Massimo Preitano

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level...

Spending Time in the Office

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spending Time in the Office

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Question of the Day

Multiple Values Inserted

I have this code on SQL Server 2022. What happens when it runs all at once? 

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Commission
GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.Commission
(id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT CommissionPK PRIMARY KEY
, salesperson VARCHAR(20)
, commission VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.Commission
( salesperson, commission)
VALUES
( 'Brian', 12 ),
( 'Brian', 'None' )
GO
 

See possible answers