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Recursive Queries in SQL:1999 and SQL Server 2005

How many of you have written resursive queries in SQL? Or any language since school for that matter? Not many people write recusrive queries because of the complexity, the difficulty to understand how they work, and the chance for heap overflows. However, SQL Server 2005 implements Common Table Expressions and recursion in a way that is much easier to code and incorporates some safeguards. New author SQL Server MVP Frederic Brouard has written a fantastic article looking at resursive queries.

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Fun with JSON II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fun with JSON II

Changing Data Types

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Changing Data Types

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Question of the Day

Fun with JSON II

I have some data in a table:

CREATE TABLE #test_data
(
    id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    name VARCHAR(100),
    birth_date DATE
);

-- Step 2: Insert rows  
INSERT INTO #test_data
VALUES
(1, 'Olivia', '2025-01-05'),
(2, 'Emma', '2025-03-02'),
(3, 'Liam', '2025-11-15'),
(4, 'Noah', '2025-12-22');
If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT t1.[key] AS row,
       t2.*
FROM OPENJSON(
     (
         SELECT t.* FROM #test_data AS t FOR JSON PATH
     )
             ) t1
    CROSS APPLY OPENJSON(t1.value) t2;

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