Data wrangling fun and games
I recently had to do a very quick ‘rip and tear’ (high fives for the ‘Doom’ reference!) of stored execution plans for a bit of exploratory work I was involved with. It seems like a simple, shareable piece so here it is for you to grab, use and modify as and when you need it. […]
I’ve worked on numerous occasions with the various flavours of the FOR XML clause within SQL Server. Taking that a step further, this seemed like as good a time as ever to check out how to work with the FOR JSON clause. This clause can, simply put, be used to boil down data retrieved via […]
I recently found myself in a position whereby I needed to know how the identity columns within a given database where configured. The information I was hunting for was as follows: Identity column name and table the column belonged to. The column Data Type The last seed value used. The difference between the maximum value […]
I recently came across a scenario whereby we wanted to programmatically, via T-SQL, inspect locking behaviour on objects in a particular database when operations were being performed on given data (actually just a SELECT (WITH (NOLOCK) and DELETE statement, on a table). The requirement was to get a direct view on whether the table was […]
Greetings all, In the interim, whilst I juggle my time to get more in-depth posts rolled out (like the one surrounding Alexa skills), I back-tracked once again to look at overlooked features from the distant past of SQL 2008. I’ve chosen the topic of GROUPING SETS as the basis of this post; which basically boils […]
Hi all, Continuing on with the idea of coding snippets, here’s a follow up showing the (very similar) procedure for creating snippets in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). As before, you’ll need a file with the ‘.snippet’ extension to begin, which contains a snippet in an XML format. A basic example is shown below for […]
Good evening all, Umm…how an earth did I miss this language feature? Where have I been since the release of SQL Server 2008? This really did just pass me by. I’m in the position whereby I don’t often run into this situation; where a T-SQL MERGE statement is directly applicable (i.e. table synchronisation), but still, […]
A very small post this one, covering a little nugget that I’d almost forgot until it came up trumps again this week; TSQL FOR XML PATH can be a nice solution for concatenation of strings across rows (in a given column). It’s fairly common to have the need to concatenate column based data, as the […]
Evening all, I thought this would be worth sharing, in its current form. It’s a small piece of SQL (this would be encapsulated in a Stored Procedure) that allows you to search through a host of objects encompassing Stored Procedures, Functions, Views, Triggers and even Indexes for a specific search term (i.e. an object name). […]
A common task within SQL is to search an objects definition for a particular reference. This might be a table, column, procedure, function or view name. Below are a few techniques for achieving this. I’ve also highlighted some tables that are related to SQL Server Maintenance Plans and how to start searching interrogating the data […]
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