The SQL Join clause is one of the major components of the Select statement, which is used to pull data out of SQL Server

The Select keyword starts the statement. It’s often followed by a star (*) AKA splat as some DBAs call it.

This article on the SQL Insert statement, is part of a series on string manipulation functions, operators and techniques. The previous articles are focused on SQL query techniques, all centered around the task of data preparation and data transformation.

In this article, we’ll walk-through the SQL Pivot and SQL Unpivot operators and how they can be useful to transpose SQL Server data. Also, we’ll discuss both static and dynamic ways to use PIVOT and UNPIVOT relational operators that can be used to transform aggregated distinct values as column(s) in the result-set by specifying all the column values in the PIVOT IN clause.

In this article, we’ll walk-through the SQL update statement to modify one or more existing rows in the table. 

In this article, we are going to learn how to use the SQL LIKE operator, in SQL Server, using regular expressions to find and/or manipulate text. We will start by learning the symbols and basic syntax of using wildcard regular expressions. We will use character sets and repetition expressions to create flexible matching patterns, and along the way, we’ll examine different ways to use the LIKE operator. And then, finally, in the latter part of the section, we will explore some of the most common and most useful regular expression examples.

This article will provide a deep dive into the SQL Union operator, describing its many uses along with examples and explore some common questions like the differences between Union vs Union All.

This article will provide an overview of the SQL Join and cover all of the SQL join types including inner, self, cross and outer. For inner joins we’ll be discussing Equi and Theta joins.

The Case statement in SQL is mostly used in a case with equality expressions. The SQL Case statement is usually inside of a Select list to alter the output. What it does is evaluates a list of conditions and returns one of the multiple possible result expressions.

When we’re developing solutions, we can sometimes forget useful commands we can use in T-SQL that make it convenient to remove data, eliminate objects, or carefully remove data. We look at three of these commands with a few examples of where we might consider using them in development, or in rare production cases. While they may offer us speed and convenience in some cases, we also look at some situations where they may not be the best tool to use.

A client recently discovered a discrepancy on one of our reports that showed an improvement in performance metrics but was inaccurate. Our reports came from a software tool, which showed the average performance throughout the day. It derived this number from periodic checks and the frequency changed, which affected our report. When we showed an improvement in the metrics on a report, the client showed us that the frequency change may have impacted this, not necessarily any improvement in performance. In situations where we’re measuring values and comparing them to other values, how can we prevent a change in measurement from impacting our reports? Read more »

SQL Server supports table valued functions, what are functions that return data in the form of tables.

JOIN operations in SQL Server are used to join two or more tables. However, JOIN operations cannot be used to join a table with the output of a table valued function.

APPLY operators are used for this purpose.

Sequence objects are used to sequentially generate numeric values. They were introduced in SQL Server 2012.

Sequence objects are similar to the IDENTITY column in any SQL table. However, unlike the IDENTITY column, they are independent and are not attached to any table. Sequence objects are used both independently and within the DML statements i.e. INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE.

This article will take a detailed look at sequence objects.