In a previous post, I did an INSERT followed by a SELECT. When I do that, the table needs to already exist. But what if I want to take the rows returned from a SELECT statement and use them to create a new table? That’s what a SELECT INTO statement does. In the example above, I’ve taken a distinct list of OrderID and OrderContact values and used them to create a new dbo.

2025-04-03

I’ve had many tools create extra long file names, by the time you include the path. If you try to delete this using the DEL command in Windows, you’ll see an error. The system cannot find the path specified In particular, I’ve seen this with Visual Studio, and when I’ve used Git to clone repositories into folders. If you run into this, the easiest way to deal with it is to:

2025-04-02

Another way you can get rows to insert into a table is by executing a stored procedure or, in fact, even by executing dynamic SQL. Either way, these both use an EXEC statement. In the example shown, I’m doing an INSERT into the dbo.CinemaGroups table. I’ve declared the two columns that are being inserted. The stored procedure returns the rows that I want to insert. This is again fairly easy to troubleshoot because the EXEC clause can usually be executed by itself, and you can see the rows coming back.

2025-04-01

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. I do a lot of reviewing of database designs and one thing I always check for is the use of data types, including when they’ve been used in views. So we added a tool that can help to find these. It’s called ListViewColumnsAndDataTypes. The procedure takes four parameters: @DatabaseName is the database to process (not used in the Azure SQL DB version) @SchemasToList is a comma-delimited list of schema names or ALL @ViewsToList is a comma-delimited list of view names or ALL @ColumnsToList is a comma-delimited list of column names or ALL

2025-03-31

When you’re performing an INSERT, you can also get values from a query., rather than specifying the values in the INSERT statement. In the example shown above, I’ve queried for a distinct list of order contacts and their phone number from the dbo.Orders table. I’m then inserting those values into the dbo.OrderContacts table. These types of statements are easy to debug because I can just highlight the SELECT clause and run it to see what comes back.

2025-03-30

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. Section: Development Level: Medium Question: You have a scalar T-SQL function in SQL Server and want to change it. Apart from permissions, what would stop you from using ALTER FUNCTION to change it? Answer: You can’t change from an inline function to a multi-statement function.

2025-03-29

The DELETE statement is one of the most common SQL statements. We use it to remove rows from a table. In the example, I’ve said to delete rows from the dbo.CinemaGroups table where the value in the CinemaGroupID column is greater than 3. You need to make sure that your DELETE statements have WHERE clauses, unless what you’re intending to do is delete all the rows in the table. You don’t want to make the common mistake where people highlight a DELETE statement in SQL Server Management Studio and forget to include the WHERE clause as well.

2025-03-28

I recently finished another Audible audio book. It was How to Land an A330 Airbus: And Other Vital Skills of the Modern Man by James May. I need to start by saying that I am a really, really big fan of James May. After watching his Toy Stories series, I decided that when I grow up, I want to be James May. It was brilliant, inventive, and just a bunch of fun.

2025-03-27

Foreign keys are mostly used where you store the primary key of another table, and want to check that it’s valid. This is used to ensure database integrity. For example, I might have a CustomerID stored in an Orders table, and I want to make sure that the customer already exists. In the example above, I have a Courses table and I want to make sure that the CollegeID that’s stored for each course, actually matches a college that’s already in the Colleges table.

2025-03-26

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. Section: Administration Level: Intro Question: You have an Azure SQL Database. How can you create a copy of the Azure SQL Database on the same logical server? Answer: The easiest option is to use the CREATE DATABASE AS COPY OF command.

2025-03-25