By Itzik Ben-Gan, 05/22/2012
Itzik continues his discussion of T-SQL best practices; he discusses cloud compatibility, date and time best practices, the importance of writing in a standard way, and ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 04/20/2012
Some T-SQL best practices include thinking in a relational way, always remembering NULLs and the three-valued-logic, realizing the full implications of using the NOLOCK hint and ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 03/19/2012
A key element in query tuning is using the execution plan to determine the reasons for poor query performance. SQL Server provides rich information about query plans in the ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 01/26/2012
Itzik wraps up his discussion of SQL Server 2012's window functions by focusing on optimization. He provides indexing guidelines for optimal performance, and he describes cases ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 12/13/2011
SQL Server 2012 enhances support for window aggregate functions. In part 2 of this series, Itzik discusses window offset functions and window distribution functions.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 11/21/2011
SQL Server 2012 enhances support for window aggregate functions by introducing window order and frame clauses, support for offset functions, and support for window distribution ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 10/26/2011
Itzik explains how to handle type conversions when you need to convert a character string value to another type, in both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server Denali.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 10/02/2011
Itzik describes new T-SQL scalar functions in SQL Server Denali CTP 3.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 09/26/2011
Not terminating T-SQL statements with a semicolon is on a deprecation path.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 09/14/2011
Learn about some common string manipulation tasks, such as counting occurrences of a substring within a string, verifying an exact number of occurrences of a substring within a ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 08/31/2011
Itzik describes the enhanced support for window functions introduced in Microsoft SQL Server Denali CTP3.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 08/16/2011
Itzik presents a real-world T-SQL challenge that involves generating a sequence of license plates.
By Ben-Gan, Itzik, 08/03/2011
Itzik provides the solution to last week’s table truncation challenge.
By , 07/29/2011
Itzik provides a challenge to perform fast clearing of the data from a table that has an indexed view defined on it.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 07/25/2011
More advanced uses of the APPLY table operator include efficient parallelism of queries, reuse of column aliases, aggregate over columns, unpivoting, and inlining scalar functions.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 07/07/2011
Itzik covers solutions to last week’s puzzle – Reoccurring Visits.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 06/29/2011
Itzik provides a T-SQL challenge involving identifying reoccurring visits to a website.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 06/20/2011
The APPLY table operator accepts two table expressions as input and applies the right table expression to each row from the left, allowing correlations from the right table ...
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 06/02/2011
Download your free copy of a new e-book about Data Quality and Master Data Management for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 by Dejan Sarka and Davide Mauri.
By Itzik Ben-Gan, 05/24/2011