Display More Than 8000 Characters (SQL Spackle)

SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden shows us a quick and dirty bit of SQL Spackle to display the content of VARCHAR(MAX) and NVARCHAR(MAX).

Tally OH! An Improved SQL 8K “CSV Splitter” Function

The Tally Table has proven to be a simple and elegant method for avoiding many varieties of RBAR. Unfortunately, one of its more common uses, that of a CSV splitter, has a well-known and serious performance problem. MVP Jeff Moden shows us what that problem is and how to correct it. (UPDATED with additional info and attachments on 5/12/2011).

Hierarchies on Steroids #2: A Replacement for Nested Sets Calculations

In this sequel to his first "Hierarchies on Steroids" article, SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden shows us how to build a pre-aggregated table that will answer most of the questions that you could ask of a typical hierarchy. Any bets on whether Santa is packin’ a Tally Table in his bag or not?

Why doesn’t ISNUMERIC work correctly? (SQL Spackle)

Another in our series of articles to help you fill in the cracks in your knowledge with SQL Spackle. MVP Jeff Moden shows us how IsNumeric works and how you should use it.

REPLACE Multiple Spaces with One

Replacing multiple spaces with a single space is an old problem that people use loops, functions, and/or Tally tables for. Here's a set based method from MVP Jeff Moden.

Generating Test Data: Part 2 - Generating Sequential and Random Dates

Part two of this fantastic series from Jeff Moden looks at generating date data, something which can be handy for any number of testing purposes.

Generating Test Data: Part 1 - Generating Random Integers and Floats

Learn how you can easily generate large amounts of test data efficiently in this new series from Jeff Moden. Part 1 covers integers and floating point values.

Query Tuning

Create a Tally or Numbers Table

This creates a Tally or Numbers table which is frequently used to replace loops in code and is much faster than most loops.

Hidden RBAR: Counting with Recursive CTE's

"Counting" is essential to many high performance code techniques. SQL Server MVP, Jeff Moden, shows us how to make sure that we're "Counting" and not "Crippling" our trick-code.