Very interesting article and a great discussion generator. Many thanks.

Anyone else notice the irony? :hehe: I...

What can we infer about the utility of this tool given that nobody's ever heard of it?

We've similarly avoided the use of the term "best practises" because there's always more than one way to skin a cat. Instead we've developed a SQL checklist. Before code goes...

That's right. Laziness is looking at what the price used...

Hi Dwain

Sorry for not getting back to you. I've been diverted to other projects for a while. I provided a rather simplified version of the problem as an example, but...

Chris how would you change yours to work on SQL 2005 (no cross apply and table value constructors)?

Hi Dwain

I'm enormously grateful for the code you've put up. I'll test yours and Chris's and see what I can learn from them. I'll post back my observations after some...

Awesome to have the heavy hitters on the case! Jeff, where you say:

You're not actually supposed to use any data from that. You're only supposed to use the presence of...

OK. So I'm trying to understand table value constructors and cross apply. If I do this (on a SQL 2008 machine):

SELECT *

FROM...

Thanks Chris. I'll go away and digest it. The VALUES... syntax doesn't work in SQL 2005, but it looks suspiciously like a tally table (which I already have) so I...

(Don't panic - tongue is firmly in cheek here)

Wouldn't it be good if they created a licensing structure that forced db designers to normalise their OLTP databases properly. I'm heartily...

A comprehensive discussion of the various options tried in the past can be found here:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic860953-61-1.aspx

Like Revenant, I too am a dev and not a DBA. I don't currently have access to a server that I can create dbs on, and faff around with backups...

Well, a lot has changed since 2008. BlackBerry! Who remembers that! Hilarious!

Hi adelinetfl.smkss

You can increase the number to something greater than 100. Not advocating anything here 🙂

See Query Hints in SQL Server Books online:

...MAXRECURSION number

Specifies the maximum number of recursions allowed...