Toreador (9/24/2010)

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Rune Bivrin (9/24/2010)

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However, looking the table in the question I'd probably remove the NULL-ability on the cell phone numbers. Nullable VARCHAR often doesn't make sense. Particularly when they are...

Hugo Kornelis (9/23/2010)

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Third bullet:

"A table should avoid nullable columns."

No. A table should avoid unnecessary nullable columns. When values may be missing in a column, making the column nullable is actually...

While I agree that errors aren't good, I didn't really notice them in this question. I looked up "deprecated features" in BOL, and found a reference to sys.dm_os_performance_counters. Matching that...

I couldn't find any mention of the restriction on increment either. My gut reaction was to answer "error" given that an zero increment makes no sense, but as I couldn't...

Yep, I was wrong about that. And I even ran a test to verify my thought before I posted, but I managed to read the results of that test wrong....

It's important to note that SET @result = cast (@@rowcount as varchar) does NOT change @@ROWCOUNT. The first 1 comes from the last INSERT #n VALUES(3).

This is one of the...

sknox (3/8/2010)

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Rune Bivrin (3/8/2010)

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Good question, but which alternative is correct depends on how you define platform. If you define "platform" as "versions of SQL Server", then CONVERT works in every...

Good question, but which alternative is correct depends on how you define platform. If you define "platform" as "versions of SQL Server", then CONVERT works in every version whereas CAST...

Oh, I know that. From the perspective of someone who started with SQL Server way back in 91 it's completely clear. But for the less experienced it can certainly appear...

I got it right because I knew it, but I understand why that might not be obvious, and the behaviour is slightly iffy.

If you do

SELECT @var = MAX(object_id)

FROM...

This used to be true, and I have often used this knowledge to optimise slow-running queries. But since SQL 2005 it no longer matters from a performance point of view....