Gregory Larsen

Occasionally you need to build dynamic T-SQL that not only requires the T-SQL code to be dynamic, but also requires the dynamic T-SQL to return values from the dynamic code to the calling T-SQL code. There are a number of different ways to write and execute dynamic code. For the purpose of this article, I […]

If you have ever had the need to show detailed data of individual transactions and also keep a running total, subtotals, and grand total columns at the same time, but were not exactly sure how to tackle the problem then this article might help. In this article I will show you a few different techniques […]

At some point you will have some business logic that will require you to process sequentially through a set of records one record at a time. For example you may have a list of databases, and for each database you may want to build a command that will perform some process against each database. Or […]

This is the second article in my T-SQL programming series. This article will discuss building a program loop using T-SQL. In addition to talking about building a loop, I will also discuss ways of controlling the loop processing, and different methods to break out of a loop. A programming loop is a chunk of code […]

This is the first of a series of articles discussing various aspects of T-SQL programming. Whether you are building a stored procedure or writing a small Query Analyzer script you will need to know the basics of T-SQL programming. This first article will discuss defining variables, and using the IF…ELSE logic. Local Variables As with […]

As a DBA one of your responsibilities is to monitor disk space. You always need to make sure you have enough for your databases, database backups and any other types of files you plan to store on your server. If you don’t monitor your disk space and make sure you have enough space, eventually one […]

Every now and then, you need to take the current date and calculate some other date. For instance, you might have an application that needs to determine what date is the first day of the month, or need to know the last day of the month. Now most of you probably already know how to […]

If you have written many applications then you probably have run across situations where you need to identify if a specific character or set of characters appears in a string. In this article I will discuss using the CHARINDEX and PATINDEX functions to search text columns and character strings. I will show you how each […]

Have you ever had to migrate all of the SQL Server objects from one machine to another SQL Server box? If you have, you probably have found that Microsoft has not provided a method to build a migration script for a maintenance plan. Since there is no easy way to migrate a maintenance plan, most […]

Microsoft SQL server does not support a method of identifying the row numbers for records stored on disk, although there are a number of different techniques to associate a sequential number with a row. You might want to display a set of records where each record is listed with a generated number that identifies the […]

Every so often, you might have to deal with tables that contain duplicate rows. In one case, you might only need to identify the duplicate rows. In other cases, you might need to remove the duplicate rows. This article will show you some different techniques for dealing with duplicate rows. Your interpretation of a duplicate […]

As part of the normal work, a Database Administrator (DBA) will be required to migrate databases between servers. One of the reasons for a migration might be that you are moving an application from a quality assurance (QA) environment to a production environment. Another reason might be your current database server hardware has reached the […]