Building Joins the Easy Way

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Building Joins the Easy Way

Dale Corey

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Points: 9019
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April 22, 2004 at 2:37 pm

#59202

Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/dcorey/bu

All the best,

Dale
Author: An Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

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jimryan Valued Member Points: 60 More actions · Answer 1

sheeeez, I've been using sqlserver for about 5 years now and didn't know all those options were on the menus!

tks

Vincent Rainardi SSC Veteran Points: 202 More actions · Answer 2

Same like JimRyan, I've been using SQL server for 3-4 years but I didn't know that this facility was there. I used that facility in Access.

Thanks to Dale. Regards, Vincent

Dale Corey SSCrazy Eights Points: 9019 More actions · Answer 3

You folks are perfectly welcome! Sorry about Figure 10. I told Andy and Steve about it missing but I don't think they got to it before the article was published. It's basically a print screen of the SELECT query as it appears in Query Analyzer.

Good luck to everyone who chooses to try query building with Enterprise Manager!

Sincerely,

Dale

All the best,

Dale

Author: An Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

Santosh Kadam SSC Rookie Points: 28 More actions · Answer 4

Thanx Dale for your article and the information you threw light on. I was developing reports for my system which involved lot of big and complex sql scripts involving six to seven tables and i used to write the query which was really time consuming. Through this way i believe that it will really help me to save my time.

Benjamin S Taylor SSC Journeyman Points: 93 More actions · Answer 5

Dale,

Thanks for taking the time to write a good article. I especially appreciate the screen shots.

A couple questions:

1) Where would you recommend a person go for assistance when the graphical tools are not sufficient?

2) What do you use for optimizations that are not provided in the graphical tools?

3) Why not use views for the type of problems you are presenting in your article. If the primary benefit from the graphical query painter is to provide join and filtering then this kind of work can be done effectively in a view once and used by all users who do not need to have effecient queries.

In short; it appears that your audience is for people to write SQL without knowing how to write SQL. A good DBA will have this already done for those who do not know how to write SQL through Views, User Defined Functions that return tables or Stored Procedures.

Still, I will be passing along your article to co-workers as it represents a lot of questions I answer frequently (sound like a contradiction) because I don't have enough time to do everything ahead of time.

Keep the tips coming.

Ben

Dale Corey SSCrazy Eights Points: 9019 More actions · Answer 6

Benjamin,

I would recommend using templates and/or scripts (Object Browser) in Query Analyzer.

BTW, I have to write queries that involve many tables/joins. I use QBE in Enterprise Manager to help me along with the most complex ones. It really makes it a lot easier. If you've never tried it, you should. It's very cool.

All the best,

Dale

Author: An Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

williamhoos@yahoo.com Right there with Babe Points: 789 More actions · Answer 7

One additional comment on this process. I still find the query tools in EM awkward and wanted to make sure people know that you can follow the same process in this article, but using an Access Project to create views, procs and functions in SQL Server. The interface is almost identical to the options in Access databases and has some features missing or awkward to use in EM. Just a thought.

David Catherman SSC Veteran Points: 281 More actions · Answer 8

Thanks for the article. I too struggled with the options. I even created an access project for the SQL database and continued to use Access as much as possible. But It forced me to save every query before executing creating a mess of temp queries.

An even better option is to use the query generator in Visual Studio. Create a Database Project and keep all your stored procedures and queries there (allows source contorl). When you open the TSQL code file, you can highlight portions and right-click to build the Query visually. This is a much better tool, but does not show the output as well as Query Analyzer.

VS2005 has even a better tool.

Dave C.