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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘SQL Server’ Category

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Database Identifiers | Microsoft Docs

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/06/27

As I needed to know which other characters besides $ are allowed in MSSQL identifiers: [WayBack] Database Identifiers | Microsoft Docs

The 2017 specs:

There are two classes of identifiers:

Regular identifiers
Comply with the rules for the format of identifiers. Regular identifiers are not delimited when they are used in Transact-SQL statements.

SELECT *  
FROM TableX  
WHERE KeyCol = 124

Delimited identifiers
Are enclosed in double quotation marks (“) or brackets ([ ]). Identifiers that comply with the rules for the format of identifiers might not be delimited. For example:

SELECT *  
FROM [TableX]         --Delimiter is optional.  
WHERE [KeyCol] = 124  --Delimiter is optional.

Identifiers that do not comply with all the rules for identifiers must be delimited in a Transact-SQL statement. For example:

SELECT *  
FROM [My Table]      --Identifier contains a space and uses a reserved keyword.  
WHERE [order] = 10   --Identifier is a reserved keyword.

Both regular and delimited identifiers must contain from 1 through 128 characters. For local temporary tables, the identifier can have a maximum of 116 characters.

Rules for Regular Identifiers

The names of variables, functions, and stored procedures must comply with the following rules for Transact-SQL identifiers.

  1. The first character must be one of the following:
    • A letter as defined by the Unicode Standard 3.2. The Unicode definition of letters includes Latin characters from a through z, from A through Z, and also letter characters from other languages.
    • The underscore (_), at sign (@), or number sign (#).Certain symbols at the beginning of an identifier have special meaning in SQL Server. A regular identifier that starts with the at sign always denotes a local variable or parameter and cannot be used as the name of any other type of object. An identifier that starts with a number sign denotes a temporary table or procedure. An identifier that starts with double number signs (##) denotes a global temporary object. Although the number sign or double number sign characters can be used to begin the names of other types of objects, we do not recommend this practice.

      Some Transact-SQL functions have names that start with double at signs (@@). To avoid confusion with these functions, you should not use names that start with @@.

  2. Subsequent characters can include the following:
    • Letters as defined in the Unicode Standard 3.2.
    • Decimal numbers from either Basic Latin or other national scripts.
    • The at sign, dollar sign ($), number sign, or underscore.
  3. The identifier must not be a Transact-SQL reserved word. SQL Server reserves both the uppercase and lowercase versions of reserved words. When identifiers are used in Transact-SQL statements, the identifiers that do not comply with these rules must be delimited by double quotation marks or brackets. The words that are reserved depend on the database compatibility level. This level can be set by using the ALTER DATABASE statement.
  4. Embedded spaces or special characters are not allowed.
  5. Supplementary characters are not allowed.When identifiers are used in Transact-SQL statements, the identifiers that do not comply with these rules must be delimited by double quotation marks or brackets.

Note

Some rules for the format of regular identifiers depend on the database compatibility level. This level can be set by using ALTER DATABASE.

Related: [WayBack] ALTER DATABASE Compatibility Level (Transact-SQL) | Microsoft Docs

–jeroen

Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL Server | Leave a Comment »

SQL: “where not exists … having” formulation; anti-join alternative

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/06/26

I need to write up some notes, but there are some links that will help me:

It’s a question of readability. There is no difference in performance.
Old versions of SQL Server were silly enough to look up meta data, but not any more.

SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM baz WHERE baz.id = bar.id);
SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM baz WHERE baz.id = bar.id);

I am not considering NULL or “fun variants” which don’t seem intuitive to me.

SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE EXISTS (SELECT NULL FROM baz WHERE baz.id = bar.id);

SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1/0 FROM baz WHERE baz.id = bar.id);

The question popped up in comments just now. I researched the manuals of the most popular RDBMS:

A search on SO for code:"EXISTS (SELECT 1" yields 5,048 results.
A search on SO for code:"EXISTS (SELECT *" yields 5,154 results.
Updated links and counts 07.2015.

So SELECT * has the popular vote and the big commercial RDBMS on its side.
I find SELECT 1 more intuitive. It’s like saying “if at least one exists”.
Is SELECT * more intuitive?

–jeroen

 

 

Posted in Database Development, Development, Firebird, InterBase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL, SQL Server | Leave a Comment »

How to terminate sqlcmd immediately after execution completed? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/01/24

The subtle difference between -q and -Q: the latter will exit after executing the command (regardless of the SQL server version; I think this was introduced in SQL Server 2005 or 2000).

Inside the command, you can use single ' quotes for strings.

C:\Users\jeroenp>sqlcmd /?
Microsoft (R) SQL Server Command Line Tool
Version 10.50.2500.0 NT x64
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

usage: Sqlcmd            [-U login id]          [-P password]
  [-S server]            [-H hostname]          [-E trusted connection]
  [-N Encrypt Connection][-C Trust Server Certificate]
  [-d use database name] [-l login timeout]     [-t query timeout]
  [-h headers]           [-s colseparator]      [-w screen width]
  [-a packetsize]        [-e echo input]        [-I Enable Quoted Identifiers]
  [-c cmdend]            [-L[c] list servers[clean output]]
  [-q "cmdline query"]   [-Q "cmdline query" and exit]
  [-m errorlevel]        [-V severitylevel]     [-W remove trailing spaces]
  [-u unicode output]    [-r[0|1] msgs to stderr]
  [-i inputfile]         [-o outputfile]        [-z new password]
  [-f  | i:[,o:]] [-Z new password and exit]
  [-k[1|2] remove[replace] control characters]
  [-y variable length type display width]
  [-Y fixed length type display width]
  [-p[1] print statistics[colon format]]
  [-R use client regional setting]
  [-b On error batch abort]
  [-v var = "value"...]  [-A dedicated admin connection]
  [-X[1] disable commands, startup script, enviroment variables [and exit]]
  [-x disable variable substitution]
  [-? show syntax summary]

–jeroen

via: [WayBack] c# – How to terminate sqlcmd immediately after execution completed? – Stack Overflow

Posted in Database Development, Development, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 | 1 Comment »

Visual Representation of SQL Joins – CodeProject

Posted by jpluimers on 2017/08/02

I thought I posted a reference to this a long time ago, but didn’t.

It’s one of the things I show when explaining joins to people. Sometimes I need it myself too (:

The article explains these in greater detail:

  • INNER JOIN
  • LEFT JOIN
  • RIGHT JOIN
  • OUTER JOIN
  • LEFT JOIN EXCLUDING INNER JOIN
  • RIGHT JOIN EXCLUDING INNER JOIN
  • OUTER JOIN EXCLUDING INNER JOIN

Note:

  • the opposite of INNER JOIN is not OUTER JOIN. It’s OUTERJOIN EXCLUDING INNER JOIN
  • the opposite of OUTER JOIN is empty set.

But the diagram is usually speaks for itself.

–jeroen

Source: Visual Representation of SQL Joins – CodeProject

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Access, Database Development, DB2, Development, Firebird, InterBase, MySQL, OracleDB, PostgreSQL, SQL, SQL Server | Leave a Comment »

Applications that scale badely on High-DPI Displays: How to Stop the Madness – via: SQLServerCentral

Posted by jpluimers on 2017/05/10

Many applications still scale badly on High-DPI displays: dialogs way too small, icons you need a microscope for, etc.

SSMS in High-DPI Displays: How to Stop the Madness – SQLServerCentral explains a great trick that works for many applications, for intance:

The trick comes down to enabling the PreferExternalManifest registry setting and then create a manual manifest for the application that forces the application to use “bitmap scaling” by basically telling it does not support “XP style DPI scaling”.

You name manifest file named after the exe and stored it in the same directory as the exe.

After that, you also have to rename the exe to a temporary name and then back in order to refresh the cache.

A quote from the trick:

In Windows Vista, you had two possible ways of scaling applications: with the first one (the default) applications were instructed to scale their objects using the scaling factor imposed by the operating system. The results, depending on the quality of the application and the Windows version, could vary a lot. Some scaled correctly, some other look very similar to what we are seeing in SSMS, with some weird-looking GUIs. In Vista, this option was called “XP style DPI scaling”.

The second option, which you could activate by unchecking the “XP style” checkbox, involved drawing the graphical components of the GUI to an off-screen buffer and then drawing them back to the display, scaling the whole thing up to the screen resolution. This option is called “bitmap scaling” and the result is a perfectly laid out GUI.

In order to enable this option in Windows 10, you need to merge this key to your registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SideBySide]
"PreferExternalManifest"=dword:00000001

Then, the application has to be decorated with a manifest file that instructs Windows to disable DPI scaling and enable bitmap scaling, by declaring the application as DPI unaware. The manifest file has to be saved in the same folder as the executable (ssms.exe) and its name must be ssms.exe.manifest. In this case, for SSMS 2014, the file path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\120\Tools\Binn\ManagementStudio\Ssms.exe.manifest”.

Paste this text inside the manifest file and save it in UTF8 encoding:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="*" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*">
</assemblyIdentity>
</dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.VC90.CRT" version="9.0.21022.8" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b">
</assemblyIdentity>
</dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
<security>
<requestedPrivileges>
<requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false"/>
</requestedPrivileges>
</security>
</trustInfo>
<asmv3:application>
<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings"&gt;
<ms_windowsSettings:dpiAware xmlns:ms_windowsSettings="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">false</ms_windowsSettings:dpiAware&gt;
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>
</assembly>

view raw

ssms.exe.manifest

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This “Vista style” bitmap scaling is very similar to what Apple is doing on his Retina displays, except that Apple uses a different font rendering algorithm that looks better when scaled up. If you use this technique in Windows, ClearType rendering is performed on the off-screen buffer before upscaling, so the final result might look a bit blurry.The amount of blurriness you will see depends on the scale factor you set in the control panel or in the settings app in Windows 10. Needless to say that exact pixel scaling looks better, so prefer 200% over 225% or 250% scale factors, because there is no such thing as “half pixel”.

–jeroen

Source: SSMS in High-DPI Displays: How to Stop the Madness – SQLServerCentral

Posted in Database Development, Delphi, Development, Eclipse IDE, Encoding, Java, Java Platform, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, SSMS SQL Server Management Studio, UTF-8, UTF8 | 4 Comments »

Fixing 0x858C001E error on SQL Server 2012/2014 updates

Posted by jpluimers on 2017/03/16

A long time ago I wrote about Fixing 84b40000 error on SQL Server 2008 updates (like KB2977321 and KB2285068).

The same holds for error 0x858C001E errors when updating SQL Server 2012 and 2014:

For x86 systems, ensure these directories are not compressed:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition

For x64 systems, ensure these directories are not compressed:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server
C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SQL Server
C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition

Sources:

–jeroen

Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL Server, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 | Leave a Comment »

Static Code Analyzer for T-SQL – MS SQL Server. Plugs into MS SSMS and can al…

Posted by jpluimers on 2017/01/12

Static Code Analyzer for T-SQL – MS SQL Server.

Plugs into MS SSMS and can also be run from command line.It reports useful clues which you can turn/on off to your liking. http://sqlcodeguard.com/index-database-issues.html

It will spot declared but unused variables, but it appears it doesn’t do code coverage or execution path to spot stuff like variables being used without being initialized.

http://sqlcodeguard.com/ Price: Free

Source: Lars Fosdal on G+: Static Code Analyzer for T-SQL – MS SQL Server. Plugs into MS SSMS and can al…

–jeroen

Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 | Leave a Comment »

SQL Server, Modulo, floats

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/08

SQL server % (modulo, not mod) operator doesn’t like floats (with reason).

You should get rid of the floats as they will give inaccurate results.

As a workaround, cast either through an integer or through a decimal: sql server modulo float – Google Search

CAST(CAST(TheInaccurateFloatValue AS decimal(38,19)) % ModuloValue AS float)

The decimal(38,19) is the maximum non-float precision you get.

( cast(dividend as integer) % divisor ) + ( dividend - cast(dividend as integer))

–jeroen

Posted in Algorithms, Database Development, Development, Floating point handling, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 | Leave a Comment »

Common Table Expressions: no nesting, but consecutively usage – via Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/28

Common table expressions are awesome. They work in at least Oracle and SQL Server.

You cannot nest them, but you can use them consecutively. Thanks spender for explaining that:

WITH
x AS
(
SELECT * FROM MyTable
),
y AS
(
SELECT * FROM x
)
SELECT * FROM y

–jeroen

via: sql – Can you create nested WITH clauses for Common Table Expressions? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in Database Development, Development, OracleDB, SQL Server, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 | Leave a Comment »

Fixing 84b40000 error on SQL Server 2008 updates (like KB2977321 and KB2285068) via: Microsoft Community

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/07/14

When installing SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 related updates, some don’t like compressed directories (even if the database files themselves are uncompressed).

I found this holds at least for KB2977321 and KB2285068.

For x86 systems, ensure these directories are not compressed:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition

For x64 systems, ensure these directories are not compressed:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server
C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SQL Server
C:\Program Files x86\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition

–jeroen

via: Can not install KB2285068 Error Code 84B40000 – Microsoft Community.

Posted in Database Development, Development, Power User, SQL Server, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, Windows | 1 Comment »

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