Creating a User Defined Aggregate with SQL Server 2005

SQL Server doesn't have a Product aggregate function. A recent blog post by Karen Watterson pointed out that Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q89656: Simulating a PRODUCT() Aggregate Function discusses how to achieve the Product aggregate functionality using the POWER function. We e-mailed about it and she challenged me to create a Product aggregate in SQL Server 2005. I decided to accept the challenge.

Exploring 'ON DELETE SET NULL' in SQL Server 2005

At first glance, the 'ON DELETE SET NULL' option in SQL Server 2005 may not seem like a big deal, but once you've seen how it can be used, I think you will be impressed. The basics? If Order.CustomerID has a foreign key to Customer.CustomerID and a customer is deleted, 'ON DELETE SET NULL' causes the CustomerID field in each of that customer's orders to be set to NULL. It allows the "parent" record to be deleted and sets the "child" record's column to NULL. A normal foreign key says Order.CustomerID must match a record in Customer. An 'ON DELETE SET NULL' foreign key says that if Order.CustomerID is not null, then its value must match a record in Customer.

Reporting Strictly for Developers: Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Serv

With the release of SQL Server Reporting Services, Microsoft finally makes a commitment to developer-centric reporting. They've integrated the design-time environment integration with Visual Studio and enabled report delivery through Web browsers, PDFs, Excel, and XML. Learn how to make this tool work for you.

Changing XML Schema attached in SQL Server 2005

XML has become an first class datatype in SQL Server 2005 . You can check my previous articles for an idea of XML features introduced. In this article we will take a look at how we can alter a XML Schema attached to an Typed XML data. XML's can be caegorized into two categories, typed and un-typed. Any XML that conforms to an XML schema is called as typed. And on the contrary plain XML strings are called as un-typed.

Recursive Queries in SQL Server 2005

Part 2 of new T-SQL enhancements from Srinivas Sampath. SQL Server 2005 contains a number of enhancements designed to allow you to write more powerful queries while keeping the code structured in a way that makes development and understanding it easier. Building on his first look at Common Table Expressions, Srinivas now looks at recursive queries with CTEs.

Common Table Expressions in SQL Server 2005

The next evoution of T-SQL, which will be released in SQL Server 2005, contains a number of enhancements designed to allow you to write more powerful queries while keeping the code structured in a way that makes development and understanding it easier. Coming ever so closer to the SQL-99 specification with Common Table Expressions, new author Srinivas Sampath brings us an introduction to this new way of writing complex queries.

Exploring 'ON DELETE SET NULL' in SQL Server 2005

At first glance, the 'ON DELETE SET NULL' option in SQL Server 2005 may not seem like a big deal, but once you've seen how it can be used, I think you will be impressed. The basics? If Order.CustomerID has a foreign key to Customer.CustomerID and a customer is deleted, 'ON DELETE SET NULL' causes the CustomerID field in each of that customer's orders to be set to NULL.

What is the third rule of data normalization?

Each time a stored procedure calls another stored...

Each time a stored procedure calls another stored...