Phil Factor continues his data obfuscation series:
We are taking a slow-but-steady approach. We rewrite our code from the previous blog post that assembles the string; it now uses a view to get its random numbers, and we’ll speed it up slightly by putting a bit more intelligence into the markov table. We then put it in a slow User-defined Scalar function. We want a scalar function that isn’t schema verified and is not considered to be deterministic. The reason for this is that it has to be executed every row despite having the same parameter.
There are many ways to store the information permanently in a Markov table but we’ll be using Table-valued parameters for our function. I’ll show how they are generated from the original information in AdventureWorks, but they could be so easily fetched from a table of markov entries with each markov set identified by a name. This could be delivered to you by the production DBA so that you wouldn’t need any access to the production server.
Next time, Phil promises to tackle dates.