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Category: T-SQL

Your Reminder Not To MERGE

Published 2017-08-18 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Wilkie points out the numerous problems with the MERGE operator:

Now, when I last posted, I’m sure you thought I was done talking about the MERGE statement. You are so wrong, compadre! One more post is absolutely needed!

There are a few issues with the MERGE statement. Well, as of this writing, there are 361 possible issues according to Microsoft Connect – the actual website where Microsoft checks to see what issues exist!

So, if you want to use the MERGE statement, please read through every issue listed on the link above and make sure that none of those scenarios could exist for you. If they don’t, great. Knock yourself out and use it.

But wait, there’s more!  Read on to see what else could be a problem.

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CROSS APPLY Replacing REPLACE

Published 2017-08-16 by Kevin Feasel

Bert Wagner shows off a good use of the APPLY operator:

Here we only have 4 nested REPLACE functions. My shameful record is 29. I’m not proud of it, but sometimes it’s the only way to get things done.

Not only are these nested REPLACE() functions difficult to write, but they are difficult to read too.

Instead of suffering through all of that ugly nesting, what you can do instead is use CROSS APPLY:

Click through for the example.  This is one of several great uses for the APPLY operator.

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Substrings: Powershell Versus T-SQL

Published 2017-08-14 by Kevin Feasel

Shane O’Neill contrasts the SUBSTRING function in T-SQL with Powershell’s Substring method:

The main difference that I can see when using SUBSTRING() in SQL Server versus in PowerShell is that SQL Server is very forgiving.

If you have a string that is 20 characters longs and you ask for everything from the 5th character to the 100th character, SQL Server is going to look at this, see that the string does not go to the 100th character, and just give you everything that it can.

It’s a small difference but an important one.

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Spheres In SQL Server

Published 2017-08-10 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Murygin continues his quest to build a graphics engine with spatial data:

Couple of years ago I came up with an algorithm of drawing an ellipse using SQL Server spatial geometry: http://slavasql.blogspot.com/2015/02/drawing-ellipse-in-ssms.html

I’ve used that algorithm to make a sphere and as in my previous blog of drawing 3D Cube I use external procedure to simplify the process.
This time instead of temporary stored procedure I’m using a function to generate Geometrical content.

This has been an enjoyable series so far, showing how to build different shapes using spatial queries.

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ARITHABORT And ANSI_WARNINGS

Published 2017-08-07 by Kevin Feasel

Shane O’Neill looks at what the ARITHABORT and ANSI_WARNINGS settings do in SQL Server:

So, like a dog when it sees a squirrel, when I found out about the problems with ARITHABORT and ANSI_WARNINGS I got distracted and started checking out what else I could break with it. Reading through the docs, because I found that it does help even if I have to force myself to do it sometimes, I found a little gem that I wanted to try and replicate. So here’s a reason why you should care about setting ARITHABORT and ANSI_WARNINGS on.

These are two settings where the default value makes a lot of sense.

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Conditional Counts

Published 2017-08-04 by Kevin Feasel

Mark Broadbent shows that COUNT has a few tricks up its sleeve:

When I came to compare the results against aggregated data that I had, I noticed that the values were off and it became fairly obvious that the transactional data also contained refunds and rebates (positive values but logically reflected as negative by the Transaction_Type status) and these were not just causing inaccuracies for the SUM on Sales_Value, but were also causing the COUNT for Number_Of_Sales to be wrong. In other words, refunds and rebates must be removed from the SUM total and not aggregated in the Number_Of_Sales columns. Now at this stage, you might be thinking that we can do this by a simple WHERE clause to filter them from the aggregates, but not only is it wrong to “throw away” data, I realised that my target tables also contained aggregate columns for refunds and rebates.

I have only used the SUM(CASE) method that Mark shows.  It’s interesting that COUNT(CASE) can work, but I agree that it is probably more confusing, if only because it’s so rare.

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Using The COMPRESS Function In SQL Server

Published 2017-08-02 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little explains the COMPRESS() function in SQL Server 2016:

One cool little feature in SQL Server 2016 is COMPRESS(). It’s a TSQL function available in all editions that shrinks down data using the GZIP algorithm (documentation).

Things to know about COMPRESS():

  • Compressed data is in the VARBINARY(max) data type

  • You get the data “back to normal” by  using the DECOMPRESS function – which also outputs VARBINARY(max)

  • You can’t use columns of the VARBINARY(max) type in an index key column– but it may be useful to use the column as a filter in a filtered index, in some cases

COMPRESS() uses standard GZip compression, so you could use methods other than DECOMPRESS() to inflate the data—for example, bring the compressed data out to your application and use language-specific GZip libraries to decompress the data.  Read the whole thing.

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MERGE With Deletion

Published 2017-08-01 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Wilkie shows an example of deleting data as part of a merge operation:

The last time we were together, we learned how to use the MERGE statement when we wanted to insert rows that didn’t exist and update rows that didn’t. This time we’re going to add onto that. We’re adding the seldom used, but delightfully potent – delete rows that no longer exist in the original table.

MERGE is an enticing but dangerous piece of syntax.  It looks so nice until you realize how many bugs and oddities there are in the command.

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Time Slicing T-SQL

Published 2017-07-31 by Kevin Feasel

Bill Fellows has some fancy window function footwork to split data into time slices:

That looks like a lot, but it really isn’t. Starting from the first inner most query, we select the top 24 rows from sys.all_objects and use the ROW_NUMBER function to generate us a monotonically increasing set of values, thus 1…24. However, since the allowable range of hours is 0 to 23, I deduct one from this value (A). I repeat this pattern to generate minutes (B) except we get the top 60. Since I want 15 second intervals, for the seconds query, I only get the top 4 values. I deduct one so we have {0,1,2,3} and then multiply by 15 to get my increments (C). If you want different time slices, that’s how I would modify this pattern.

Only works on 2012 or later, but it’s a fancy way of slicing into 15-second (or however you define it) chunks.

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