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Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

The OPENROWSET Trick: Accessing Stored Procedure Output In A SELECT Statement

Posted over 8 years ago

by WardPond
- 19 Comments
Updated 20 Mar 2009: This code is revisited here . This nifty little trick will allow you, with some limitations, to treat the output of a stored procedure as a named SQL record set rather than creating a table and going through an INSERT.. EXEC process...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Slaying The Time Zone Conversion Beast (or at least rendering it comatose)

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 16 Comments
Schema and code for performing time zone conversions is discussed....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

What I Know Now: Ward’s Epistle to the N00bs

Posted over 4 years ago

by WardPond
- 13 Comments
And I remember what she said to me How she swore that it never would end I remember how she held me, oh so tight Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then Bob Seger, Against the Wind All you need is love Love is all you need John Lennon and Paul...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

A Seasonal Query

Posted over 5 years ago

by WardPond
- 12 Comments
UPDATED 29 Dec 2008: Back to the tried-and-true source code formatting method, per Kalen’s comment and my response . UPDATED 24 Dec 2008: I got this from a couple of different sources, so I didn't realize when I drafted this post that Dirk wrote...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Denis' Prime Number Challenge: A New Leader

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 12 Comments
Well, folks, there's a new sheriff in town.. this is a continuation of a conversation here and here . I've tweaked Hugo's syntax to further filter the initial seive population (similar to the pre-filtering present in the discredited tangent ). Where...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

R.I.P. Tun-Hsu "Martha" McCoy -- and Thank You!

Posted over 5 years ago

by WardPond
- 12 Comments
Every once in awhile, you get a piece of news that sets you looking at where you are and where you've been. Today is one of those days. There will be no technical content in this post, and it might ramble some. Bear with me; it's been a contemplative night.....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Front Page (Career) News: Opportunity Knocks; Your Correspondent Answers

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 11 Comments
For the past seven years, I’ve had one of the best jobs somebody in my line of work can have. Would I ever leave it voluntarily?...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Pond's Laws of System Design (or, How To Be A Competent Professional In An Irrational World)

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 11 Comments
A philosophical discussion of the mindset of a professional applications developer....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Implementing Optional Parameters To A Stored Procedure

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 10 Comments
A compact syntax for implementing optional parameters in a WHERE clause is offered....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Denis' Prime Number Challenge

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 10 Comments
I answer Denis' challenge with another post to refrain from downloading to your mobile device....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Today's Blog Post Is Brought To You By The Letter "D"

Posted over 6 years ago

by WardPond
- 10 Comments
Let's have a little fun.. This is a special post in the history of this little backwater of the internet. Its specialness is related to the letter D. If you can figure out why this post is special, and how that specialness is related to the letter...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

So.. *This* Is How Twitter Gets People Into Trouble..

Posted over 4 years ago

by WardPond
- 10 Comments
Consider this post a parable about what can happen if you let Twitter into your life.. I spent part of my day researching a particular capability of the TechSmith Camtasia Studio software my colleague Venkata Raj Pochiraju has been using to record readiness...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: A New String Concatenation Contender for SQL Server 2008

Posted over 4 years ago

by WardPond
- 9 Comments
UPDATED 11:11p 7 September 2009: Based on my latest exchange with Adam (see the comments for this post), compound operators should be avoided for string concatenation due to the ORDER BY bug discused in KB 287515 . The XML variant below is the preferred...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Temp Tables or Table Variables?

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 9 Comments
On the occasion of this blog's one hundredth post, I thought I'd pass along some information I recently discussed with my youngest cousin, Tom, who is like me an otherwise rational person who's been bitten by the database development bug. In a conversation...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Design: Do Not Fear NULLs

Posted over 8 years ago

by WardPond
- 9 Comments
A brief discourse on what NULLity means, how it works in the database, how to use it, and examples of its misuse....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Non-Technical News: Warning: Blog Neglect Ahead

Posted over 6 years ago

by WardPond
- 8 Comments
It's been awhile since I posted any non-technical news, and since the current non-technical news is going to result in blog neglect until August 9, I figured I'd let you know what's up. Of course, that's the pivotal piece of information right there...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: The String Concatenation XML Trick

Posted over 5 years ago

by WardPond
- 8 Comments
Courtesy of my good friend and once-and-always colleague, Lance Larsen, who writes: I recently ran into this little trick. Joining two tables having a one-to-many relationship and stuffing a set of column values from the many side into a single...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: The String Concatenation XML Trick Revisited (Or, Adam Is Right, But We Can Fix It)

Posted over 5 years ago

by WardPond
- 8 Comments
A find shared by one friend leads to correspondence from another.. The redoubtable Adam Machanic left a comment on The Technique That Lance Found which points out that special XML characters in a string will get entitized. As usual, Adam is correct...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Are You Paying To Read This Post? You Don't Have To!

Posted over 5 years ago

by WardPond
- 7 Comments
In the age of the blog, it may well be that republishing is the sincerest form of flattery. The same RSS technology that many of you use to read the blog through wonderful rollers like this one also can be turned to far more nefarious purposes. I'm going...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Career News: Goin' Mobile

Posted over 5 years ago

by WardPond
- 7 Comments
I'm goin' home And when I wanna go home I'm goin' mobile Well, I'm gonna find a home And we'll see how it feels Goin' mobile Keep me movin' - Goin' Mobile , Pete Townsend ( The Who ) Frequent readers of this space will know that I only break out the...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

IF EXISTS (SELECT..) vs. IF (SELECT COUNT(1)..) > 0

Posted over 6 years ago

by WardPond
- 7 Comments
Consider this a coding tip for SQL Server 2000 (as well as a reason to upgrade), and kudos for the SQL Server 2005 development team. In SQL Server 2000, IF (SELECT COUNT(1)..) > 0 will process an entire table or index to complete the count, while...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Applying APPLY -- Solving Parent Axis Access Performance Issues In XML Access In SQL Server 2005

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 7 Comments
"Parent axis access", a long-standing performance bottleneck in accessing data stored within XML, is addressed via use of SQL Server 2005's new CROSS APPLY operator....
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Mixing TOP With UNION

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 7 Comments
I'd like to share yet another interesting conversation from an internal discussion list. Michael sent a query that was producing inconsistent results: select TOP 35 1 AS [PRECEDANCE] , W03a . CRDATTIM , W03a . RECORDCD , W03a . CRNODE , W03a . PRTY...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Denis' Prime Number Challenge: Fourth Place Finisher

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 6 Comments
Hugo Kornelis posted a wonderful reply on his blog to the Prime Number Challenge, which runs in 9.3 seconds on my laptop. Denis posted his solution in a reply on Hugo's blog ; Denis' solution runs in 6 seconds . WOW! Perhaps this isn't such a crazy...
Ward Pond's SQL Server blog

Database Programming: Set-Based Update -- Hugo's Syntax Outperforms Shaun's; Ward Tweaks Hugo's Syntax Even Further

Posted over 7 years ago

by WardPond
- 6 Comments
A long post continuing last night's discussion regarding the generation of 1M GUIDs. I'm not sure I'd download this one to your PDA......