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Monday, September 07, 2009 6:15 PM

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

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
Posted by Ward Pond | 7 Comments
Friday, September 04, 2009 5:30 PM

Database Programming: Did You Know IN Can Do This?

Courtesy of Jens Suessmeyer comes this little gem purloined from an internal discussion; cut-and-paste this into SQL Server Management Studio and see if you can answer the questions in the comments before you execute the script: --   create and populate
Posted by Ward Pond | 4 Comments
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 7:45 PM

Adam Machanic Likes MERGE, Too

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s MERGE discussion comes a complementary (and far more detailed) take from Adam Machanic .  It’s a nifty technical discussion, under the banner of an outstanding Dr. Strangelove pun. To see some of the true power of
Posted by Ward Pond | 0 Comments
Monday, August 24, 2009 9:30 AM

Database Programming: Why I Like MERGE

In the wake of last month’s post on my new development efforts in SQL Server 2008, several of you have asked me to go into further detail.  This post is my first effort to answer those questions; right now, we’ll focus on these two , which relate
Posted by Ward Pond | 2 Comments
Sunday, July 26, 2009 11:45 PM

Database Programming: What I’ve Learned About SQL Server 2008 (with a little on SQL Server 2005 thrown in)

With SQLRAP 2.5 out the door a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been free to turn to another project, SIPA, an internal effort to automate storage and retrieval of our group’s diverse intellectual property catalog. I’m acting as both the database architect and
Posted by Ward Pond | 6 Comments
Thursday, July 02, 2009 11:15 PM

Database Programming: The Time Zone Conversion Beast, Once Comatose, Returns to Taunt Us a Second Time (or, An Answer for Iain)

Now go away, or we shall taunt you a second time. - John Cleese as a French knight (picture at left); Monty Python and the Holy Grail One of the reasons I started blogging over four years ago was my conviction that the coding challenges with which my
Posted by Ward Pond | 0 Comments
Attachment(s): SLA Calculations.zip
Friday, March 20, 2009 12:00 PM

Database Programming: The OPENROWSET Trick, Revisited

One of the most popular posts in the history of this little corner of the Internets is one from August, 2005, which describes a method for accessing stored procedure output in a SELECT statement which I’ve come to refer to as “ the OPENROWSET trick .”
Posted by Ward Pond | 3 Comments
Sunday, March 15, 2009 3:00 PM

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

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
Posted by Ward Pond | 13 Comments
Monday, March 09, 2009 9:15 PM

As Spring Approaches, a SQL Blogger’s Thoughts Turn to Daylight and Baseball

As we progress towards the Ides of March, one of my best friends-who-I’ve-never-met, Jimmy May , notes our annual transition to Daylight Savings Time , in a post he generously concludes with a link to one of this very blog’s oldies but goodies . In his
Posted by Ward Pond | 2 Comments
Saturday, March 07, 2009 2:45 AM

Database Programming: NULL and (NOT) IN Don’t Mix Well

Jens Suessmeyer is a Microsoft Consultant in Germany who frequently shares his useful techniques and insights both inside Microsoft and in the community at large.  In his latest post , he answers a colleague’s question with a simple yet thorough
Posted by Ward Pond | 0 Comments
Friday, February 27, 2009 9:30 PM

Database Programming Contest: Adam Machanic Throws Down

Never let it be said that Adam Machanic lacks style.. Adam left a comment on yesterday’s revisiting of the XML String Concatenation Trick, announcing his T-SQL Challenge: Grouped String Concatenation contest. Read Adam’s post to get all of the particulars
Posted by Ward Pond | 0 Comments
Friday, December 12, 2008 9:30 PM

Linchi Shea Makes an Interesting Point About Hints

I had a couple of extra minutes today and found this post on Linchi Shea’s blog ; I wanted to commend to all of you who’ve taken in the programming methodology and set-based thinking discussions in this little corner. While I disagree some with the point
Posted by Ward Pond | 2 Comments
Sunday, November 30, 2008 9:30 PM

Database Versioning Demonstration Uploaded

Fulfilling my promise at TechEd , I’ve finally completed a self-directed demonstration of the database versioning techniques I first presented at last year’s TechEd and which was alluded to during this year’s TechEd SQL Tricks presentations. It’s published
Posted by Ward Pond | 0 Comments
Friday, November 21, 2008 10:45 PM

TechEd Indexing Presentation Now Available on MSDN Code Gallery

Well, it took me long enough to figure out how to get this done, didn’t it?  The good news is that I have a brand new tool in my arsenal..  the bad news is that I burned a bunch of precious rural bandwidth trying to upload this material to inappropriate
Posted by Ward Pond | 1 Comments
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 10:00 AM

Scripts for “SQL Tricks: Insights from Microsoft IT”

UPDATED 22 November 2008 with Code Gallery URL. A ZIP file of the scripts from the SQL Tricks: Insights from Microsoft IT presentation I’m giving in Barcelona this week is available for download here . The tricks will be familiar to long-time denizens
Posted by Ward Pond | 3 Comments
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