SQL/Data

A co-worker pointed out to me something cool that is coming in SQL 2008. A new keyword for MERGE has been introduced. This new type of statement reduces some of the tedious work you typically do when adding data to a table in SQL. As things are now, you will check for the existence of a row, and then proceed to update the matched row if it exists, or insert the new data if the matching row did not exist. The new MERGE keyword allows you to do this all in a single statement.

I came across this list on CodeProject of SQL Queries to analyze SharePoint details and usage. This is an awesome list. Granted it does bypass the SBS object model so isn't the recommended route, but still a great list of queries you could use to make reporting on your SharePoint sites a breeze

I started this blog in August of 2003, almost 3 years ago. I've made 176 posts in those 3 years. I don't post too often to my blog because I'm not all that big on posting stories about my kids, wife, dog, etc - although those do come in every now and then. Anyway, even when I have lulls where I am not posting as much, my traffic seems to stay pretty consistent. I'm actually amazed at how much traffic I get, especially when I consider how often I get around to posting (big thanks to all the visit

I was playing around with various ways to launch SQL Reporting Services reports and came across a good tip. If you work with SRS then you'll likely know you can launch a report by simply accessing the Uri to the report. However, you can also specify format types to automatically export a report.

I have to say it, I love the new SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS). Wow. There is some really awesome stuff in there that really just blow me away. There are so many new things in SSIS that I just love - too many to mention. However, it is some of the smaller, less noticed, features that have come to be my favorites. Here are my top 3 small features in SSIS (so far).

Not sure why, but I seem to be on a T-SQL kick lately - so here's another T-SQL post. One of my favorite T-SQL hacks ever is one that can flatten out data by taking a value from multiple rows and concatenating the values into a single string.

While we're on the subject of dates in T-SQL, I never liked getting the month and year for a date and sticking an '01' in the middle (then casting it all back to a datetime) to get the first day of the month for a given date value. Then you do the same to get the end date by getting the first day of the next month and subtract a 1 from it. This way is much better.

I was reminded of a SQL function to determine if a date was a weekday or a weekend I wrote a while back when I saw the requirements of a project a colleague was working on. You'll see this requirement fairly often in many business applications. A company might want to span certain activities over business or working days only. The requirement might be to only include business days in certain calculations. Either way, there are a few things to keep in mind when making this calculation.

Tips on allowing inserts to identity columns and also for reseeding the identity value for a table.

I'm in the same boat as Scott Mitchell on this one. I practically live inside of SQL Enterprise Manager. Been using it for years abd years. But I never knew about this.