In my last post, I showed a technique for dealing with working columns when writing T-SQL. The idea was around using APPLY to be able to push values from the existing set through calculations (but preferably not scalar functions, of course), producing new columns which can be used further down the query, even in the WHERE and GROUP BY clauses. ...

T-SQL Tuesday again and this month is on T-SQL Tips (thanks Allen!). In some ways it’s a tough topic, because there are things I don’t really consider tips that other people do, and vice-versa. This one’s legitimate though: Using CROSS APPLY for working columns in calculations. Let me give you an example. Back in 2009, I wrote a blog post on ...

Little Bobby Tables’ mother says you should always sanitise your data input. Except that I think she’s wrong. The SQL Injection aspect is for another post, where I’ll show you why I think SQL Injection is the same kind of attack as many other attacks, such as the old buffer overflow, but here I want to have a bit of a whinge about the way that ...

PASS is becoming more international, which is great. The SQL Community has always been international – it’s not as if data is only generated in North America. And while it’s easy for organisations to have a North American focus, PASS is taking steps to become international. Regular readers will be aware that I’m one of three advisors to the PASS ...

Should SQL Server even have functions? (Oh yeah – this is a T-SQL Tuesday post, hosted this month by Brad Schulz) Functions serve an important part of programming, in almost any language. A function is a piece of code that is designed to return something, as opposed to a piece of code which isn’t designed to return anything (which is known as a ...

This was a proper big week. The PASS Summit ran from Tuesday night to Friday, but I’d arrived in America the Friday before. So by the time it actually started, I had that strange feeling that things were wrapping up. My calendar was ridiculously full. The stuff that I was aware of ahead of time looked like this: Friday 7th: Arrive in America. ...

The words for that song I did at the PASS Summit 2011 are as follows. On the Friday, I stopped where the bridge starts. Various recordings of it are making it to YouTube, such as here, where the song starts around 2:20 in. I should've looked the other way Verse 1: My query sucks - it takes too long So long I wrote this song The ...

Hopefully my connection is slightly better during today’s keynote than it was during yesterday’s, when “Live Blogging” didn’t really cut it. The PASS staff saw the problem and have resolved it (thanks guys!). Quentin Clark has jumped on stage to talk some more about SQL Server 2012, and he started with the expression “Data, Information and ...

I’m at the PASS Summit, and announcements are coming out nice and fast. One of the big ones that has just been made is that SQL Server will work much more closely with Apache Hadoop. Amazing stuff, that I think helps people realise that Microsoft is very much about providing platforms, and isn’t trying to stop you from using your other platforms ...

I’m a guest blogger again! This trip is already several days old for me. I arrived in America on Friday, delivered two sessions at Portland SQL Saturday event, walked (on Sunday) the Portland Half Marathon as a sponsor of Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program, delivered a full-day summit precon seminar on Monday, and was in ...