SQL, pronounced S – Q – L or “sequel”, stands for structured query language. It’s the language you use to tell a database what you want to do. It’s been around since the early 1970s[1], so it’s pretty well established. One of the most awesome things about learning SQL is once you learn it, you…
Year: 2005
SQL 101 – What is a Database
The term database is used for many different meanings. But if you compared them all, I think you would find that databases are all collections of data that are organized in some way. I usually like to refer to an Excel document when I try to explain databases. An excel file has a collection of…
SQL 101
After helping others learn SQL for several years now, I keep coming back to the same topics over and over. So, I decided to write down these SQL tutorials, and continually improve them over the years. What I’ve been able to collect here is just the introduction. This series is an introduction to Microsoft SQL…
Quickly Disconnect Users From a Database
Disconnect All Users of a Database There comes a time in every DBA’s life when he or she has many users connected to a database that needs to be detached, placed in single user mode, or simply refreshed. The problem is they keep reconnecting more quickly than you can KILL them off. This is especially…
An Upcoming Series…
I’m currently putting together some notes on a series I’d like to share with all of you. This series will cover the fundamentals of Transactional SQL (T-SQL). I’m hoping that it will grow into an introduction to database development. I’ll begin with the very basics of what a database is, and what SQL is. Then…
String Manipulation — CAST and CONVERT
So far I’ve shown you just a few of the many string manipulation functions available in Microsoft SQL. Today we’re adding two more of these tools to your tool belt. CAST and CONVERT. These two become useful when you’ve stored a value as one data type, and later find you need it used as another. …
String Manipulation — REPLACE, PATINDEX and Regular Expressions
In the previous SQL posts, I showed you SUBSTRING, then I showed you REPLACE. Now, with REPLACE, you had to know what characters you wanted to replace. What if you only knew what characters you wanted to keep? Well, let me introduce you to PATINDEX. This is an advanced command that is easy to learn,…
String Manipulation — REPLACE
In the last SQL post, I showed you SUBSTRING, and how you could use it to locate the area code in an un-formatted phone number. The problem was the field we were working from was full of malformed numbers. Today, we’ll start on cleaning up the numbers. But first, I need to include my standard…
Work, work, then some more work.
After the last post, I worked on getting a heating system put into the addition. As of last night, that’s done. It only cost 3 grand. (that’s more than i used to make in 7 weeks) I am ever so thankful to have a job that pays me a good wage. If i was still…
Project 1
I’ve been back from Christmas for nearly a week now. I’ve accomplished much more than I thought I was going to be able to this week. I have been able to create my XML parser that will allow myself and others to develop forms more rapidly. Basically the way it will work is, you will…