When creating indexes on tables, it is always best to choose columns that have a high degree of selectivity, or uniqueness. This SP, ShowUniqueness, gives the user an easy way to determine the "uniqueness" percentage of a given column or combination of columns.
2002-10-23
468 reads
My stored procedure, sp_dbsettings, allows you to view, in a cross-tabular format, all the common options and their values for all the databases on your server. Optionally, you can pass a database name as an argument if you just want to view the settings for one database (i.e., EXEC sp_dbsettings 'Northwind'). Otherwise it shows info […]
2002-10-09
649 reads
T-SQL's CHARINDEX() function is a useful for parsing out characters within a string. However, it only returns the first occurrence of a character. Oftentimes one needs to locate the Nth instance of a character or a space, which can be a complicated task in standard T-SQL. This function I wrote, imaginatively named CHARINDEX2(), allows one […]
2002-09-27
32,438 reads
The sp_for procedure provides simple single-statement loop processing for T-SQL statements, similar to the FOR command in the C language or the DOS command-line utility by the same name.It's syntax is similar to that of the DOS command. It takes an argument to represent a variable, initialize the variable, set an increment, set an end […]
2002-09-13
907 reads
SQL Server's COUNT() function is a slow and expensive way to count a table's rows because it scans the entire table or index. FASTCOUNT(), which I created, is much more efficient for this purpose - its only drawback being that it may return inaccurate results if a nonlogged (e.g., bulk) data modification operation was recently […]
2002-09-10
858 reads
Let's say you have 2 tables: a Contacts table and a PhoneNumbers table (which stores all the phone numbers for each contact). You are asked to write a query that returns each contact's name and a comma-delimited string of phone numbers for each contact, something like this:FirstName LastName PhoneNumbers--------- -------- --------------------------John […]
2002-07-22
1,035 reads
Say you wanted to create an SP for updating records in a database. How would you do this in such a way as to allow your users to edit only a subset of fields in the record, without overwriting the other fields, and without requiring verbose IF blocks and CASE statements in your code?Simple. Use […]
2002-04-16
211 reads
This short and simple script is a very fast way to count the rows in all your indexed tables. I ran it against a 2-gigabyte database containing large tables (some with over a million rows!), and it returned results in under a second.
2002-03-12
2,884 reads
By Steve Jones
on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...
By DataOnWheels
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...
By Vinay Thakur
Quick Summary for Microsoft SQL Server till 2025, I am fortunate to be part...
I have a quick question on Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance . Do we...
hi, in an ssis for each loop over an object variable called MyListVariable, i...
SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers