Tag: T-SQL

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

I saw a question recently about getting the code in a stored procedure. I’ve become dependent on SQL Prompt, which gives me a nice preview of code when I see a proc:

The main way I’ve gotten code is right clicking a proc in Object Explorer and clicking Modify. That opens up an ALTER statement for the proc.

However, there’s one more way to do this: sp_helptext.

Not the best solution, but it gives me a quick look from SQL without futzing through a big list in the OE.

SQLNewBlogger

This is a quick example of some knowledge that I can use in my regular work. When someone asked the question, I knew the code for procs was stored somewhere, but I wasn’t sure what the proc to get this was. I tried sp_help, but that wasn’t right, so I had to go look up sp_helptext.

This took about ten minutes to write.

I wrote about sequences in an editorial recently and decided to start using them. Creating one turned out to be surprisingly easy.

I had a table I’d been logging some data in, with a PK, but no natural key or identity bound to the table. Instead, this was low volume (1x per day) and I just manually adjusted the PK value.

I decided to create a sequence. As I did this, I found it interesting and consulted the BOL page for some ideas on the options.

The first part is simple. A name and datatype.

CREATE SEQUENCE dbo.MyKey as INT

That makes sense. Next, I need a starting value. In my case, I had 7 values in the table, so I added this:

START WITH 8

That gets me what I need. The last part I added was the INCREMENT BY clause. In my case, 1 works fine. My code:

The last query is how you get the next value. The NEXT VALUE FOR phrase can be used in various places, but that’s for another day.

If I needed to bind values, I could use the MINVALUE or MAXVALUE, which I’ll look at in a different post. I could also control caching and cycle values if I needed to.

SQLNewBlogger

I actually started a post on binding this to a column and then decided to add this short post in about 5 minutes.

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

One thing I needed to do lately was test how a calling program would respond to slow code. I decided to use a normal query, but add a WAITFOR() to simulate different delay levels. However, I had to look up the syntax for the call and I decided to blog about it.

WAITFOR DELAY

The WAITFOR call isn’t a function. I’ve written about that before. Instead, this is listed as a control-of-flow element in the language.

I have a rough idea of how this works. I use

WAITFOR DELAY

as the basic syntax. SQL Prompt helps me here, since looking this up is a pain and slow. I know there is a time element in here, but I always worry I’ll pick the wrong time and then sit for a long time testing.

The key is this format: hh:mm[[:ss].mss]

To delay for 2 minutes, I write this:

WAITFOR DELAY '00:02:00'

That gives me what I need, and using a string variable, I can control this delay programmatically.

SQLNewBlogger

This is a good example of learning a piece of code and writing about it. Short, simple, show how this one works in T-SQL. Add the why, show some code, and results. How you use it, and what you learned.

This was a 10 minute post.