Quarksoft\'s Notes » sql server 2005

Creating Insert Statements for SQL Server

Jonathan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:46:55 +0000

Ran across an interesting approach to generating insert statements for SQL Server 2005 (and other variants). If uses a less well known function called master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr. The approach that was taken was to use the fn_varbintohexstr function to encode the data so you did not need to use cursors or any fancy parsing to handle unicode and quotes in the generated insert statements. I thought it was a bit clever.

Note: you might need to register at SQLServerCentral.com to gain access to the site to read the above linked article.

Calculating Age in T-SQL

Jonathan — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:17:40 +0000

Here’s a decent article on calculating the age of a person (or anything else) written by Lynn Pettis. Discusses some pitfalls with leap years.

Using and Managing SQL Server Aliases

Jonathan — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:18:42 +0000

I know that not many people I have met in my SQL Server experience have used SQL Aliases. In many ways it is one of the most useful features of SQL Server. Roman Rehak wrote a great article about SQL Server Aliases. You have to be registered to see the full article, but some of the highlights are discussed below.

Creating an alias all depends on which client tools are installed on the computer you are using. Here are the common methods for running the SQL Client Configuration Tool:

If SQL Server 2000 client tools are installed, use the SQL Client Network Utility and select the Alias tab.
If SQL Server 2005 client tools are installed, use the SQL Server Configuration Manager and expand the SQL Native Client Configuration node to find the node for Aliases.
If you do not have any client tools installed, you can still get at the Client Network Utility by executing “cliconfg” from any command prompt.

Aliases are useful in the following scenarios:

Create an alias that is a friendlier name than the server name itself.
In a Development/QA/Production environment. Using aliases allow you to keep the code base across your servers the same without having to change source code (sort of related to the last bullet).
Enforce the use of a particular protocol. If you get the “Cannot generate SSPI context” error you can try creating an alias to force the use of the Named Pipes.
A distributed environment with multiple servers that reference each other using the Linked Servers feature. You can define the linked servers with the aliases instead of the actual names. This makes future moving of databases and such much easier since you will not need to chnage the linked server names in your code.
In a high-availability environment to allow you to quickly change the server without changing all your code (such as web applications and such).

I’m sure there are other useful reasons to use aliases, but that covers a few of them that show the power of the alias function.

If you have any other good ideas, please comment on the post.

Pivots with Dynamic Columns in SQL Server 2005

Jonathan — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:41:42 +0000

Found a great article at www.simple-talk.com which described how to create pivot queries with dynamic column names. It seems simple at first until you try to adjust your columns manually and then discover that you really need to implement some special code to accomplish the task. The article Pivots with Dynamic Columns in SQL Server 2005 provides just the right information to accomplish the task and saved me a ton of time trying to create the process on my own. Great job Andras.