Introduction
I do not use subqueries that often, but they are definitely a tool in my T-SQL drawer. I understand
(I think) how subqueries work and can read them to determine what the purpose of the query is.
There are times that a subquery will fit a situation better than any join that I can come up with.
That being said, I am not a guru or an expert on subqueries. There are better resources for very complicated and elegant subquery
solutions to problems. However, I came across an issue recently where a subquery was behaving strangely and
thought it would make interesting reading once I determined the problem. As an FYI, I did not solve this problem
in the first half hour or so when I looked at it. I was busy and had to let it go for a couple days and when
I came back to it, another good 30-60 minutes was spent determining the cause of the problem and verifying that
I had solved it.
The Problem
A developer recently sent me an email where he was asking what the difference was between the following
two queries:
declare @this_id int
set @this_id = 100
select sum(ol.price)
from OrdLineDtl od, OrdLine ol
where od.TypID = ( select TypID
from Attr
where AttrName = 'Item'
)
and od.AttrVal = @this_id
and od.OrdLineID = ol.OrdLineID
go
declare @this_id int
set @this_id = 100
select sum(oi.price)
from OrdLineDtl od, OrderLine ol
where od.TypID = 53
and od.AttrVal = @this_id
and od.OrdLineID = ol.OrdLineID
These two queries prooduce the following result from Query Analyzer:
On the messages tab, I get:
Server: Msg 245, Level 16, State 1, Line 3
Syntax error converting the varchar value 'just for me.' to a column of data type int.
(1 row(s) affected)
While on the Results tab, I get:
Sum
----------
1995.0000
The two statements are valid statements. The schema for the tables involved is as follows:
Create Table Attr
( TypID int,
AttrName char(50)
)
Create Table OrdLine
( OrderItemID int,
ProductCode varchar( 50),
Price money
)
Create Table OrderLineDtl
( OrderItemID int,
TypID int,
AttrVal varchar( 50)
)
The AttrID of 53 does indeed match the AttrName of ‘Item’.
Analysis
Spend a few minutes trying to figure this one out. The analysis is on
page 2.
