I’m sure you’ve all heard it, and probably even said it, many times: “SQL Server sucks at string manipulation”. And with good reason – it is true. But not quite as true as many seem to believe.   I notice that many people who complain about SQL Server lacking string manipulation are themselves unaware of the string functions that SQL ...

No sane person would even consider using SQL Server to construct a list of prime numbers. So just to prove that I’m not sane (as if there could be any doubt!), this post will be about finding prime numbers.   First a bit of history. Ward Pond wrote about efficient ways to populate a table with one million GUIDs. I posted a comment with a ...

A recurring question in the newsgroups is: “How do I output unrelated rows side by side?”   I’ll use the AdventureWorks database as an example. Suppose that my manager wants a report listing, for each order, all products ordered and all reasons the customer has for ordering from AdventureWorks. Here’s a sample of how the report should ...