Miscellaneous
Here are those random thoughts I warned you about. Beware!
What is data, and what is code? How do we define the difference, and decide what goes where? It is great to say "keep data out of your code", but what if that data is integral to the application itself? Isn't it therefore code, and not data? read more...
Column 'xyz' is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.
Arggh!! There it is, yet again .. that annoying error message. Why is SQL so picky about this? What's the deal!? read more...
I see it time and time again in forums -- "dates" that don't sort properly, "numbers" that don't add correctly, "boolean" data with 10 different values, and so on ... Since we are rarely provided any DDL to review, it often takes many posts going back and forth until we finally realize: "wait ... you aren't using a datetime data type to store these dates?!" read more...
Microsoft Access / JET SQL doesn't support cursors; the only way to process rows one by one is using VBA and opening a Recordset. This means that you're stuck using set-based "queries". So ... is this a good thing or a bad thing? A very, very good thing -- in fact, it's what makes Access a great tool for learning SQL! read more...
You are a very important, talented, enterprise-level programmer! You write and maintain millions of lines of code, compiling your applications takes several hours, and your databases contain hundreds of tables with millions of rows. You clearly do not have time to write silly test applications!
read more...
A Google search for the phrase sql "case statement" returns 127,000 results. Meanwhile, if we do a search for the phrase sql "case expression" we get back only 43,900 results. What does this mean? Most people don't understand what SQL's CASE feature really is, how to use it, or how it works!
read more...
Studies have shown that the "F1" key is the least commonly pressed key on today's keyboards! Ok, well maybe not actual studies, but from my own experience, I am convinced that on many keyboards here around the world the F1 key still has that shiny "new key" look and smell because it's never been used.
read more
Let's go to the mailbag!
In response to this post, Chris writes:
read more...
I've been playing around with a handy tool for creating Word and Excel files called OfficeWriter that's pretty impressive.
read more...
In most industries, beginners work on simple, short projects, using only the most basic concepts that they have learned. The experts in those industries, meanwhile, work on things that are very large, complicated, difficult to manage, and require lots of time, energy and resources.
read more...
Just a quick post of some benchmarking code for our good friend Guayo at TheDailyWTF, in regards to this discussion.
I just wanted to take a minute to highlight this thread in the sqlteam forums.
Handy reminder: The PARSENAME() function can be useful for parsing small strings. It returns parts 1-4 (working right to left) of a string, with each part delimited by periods.
read more...