Jeff's SQL Server Blog

Programming is like dreaming?

Jeff Smith — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:52:38 GMT

This is from March, so it's a little old, but I just stumbled upon it and found it a bit interesting. I never thought of programming this way before, but it does make sense:

Programming is like a dream

Is it just me ...

Jeff Smith — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:50:54 GMT

... or is about time I got back to some blogging?

Processing an OLAP cube with a T-SQL Stored Procedure

Jeff Smith — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:26:05 GMT

Here's a simple SQL Server stored procedure that you can call to process an OLAP cube using T-SQL. The parameters should be self-explanatory. To me, this is a little easier and more flexible than processing using DTS packages.

create procedure ProcessCube

@Database varchar(100),

@Cube varchar(100),

@Partition varchar(100) = null, -- If NULL, process the entire Cube

@Server varchar(100) = 'localhost'

Author: Jeff Smith

Version: 10/27/2008

/* variables used to store object handles */

declare @o_svr int, @o_db int, @o_cube int, @o_part int, @o_mds int

declare @hr int

/* different cube processing options. This SP uses "default" */

declare @PROCESS_DEFAULT int

declare @PROCESS_FULL int

declare @PROCESS_REFRESH_DATA int

set @PROCESS_DEFAULT = 0

set @PROCESS_FULL = 1

set @PROCESS_REFRESH_DATA = 2

-- create a DSO.Server object:

exec @hr = sp_OACreate 'DSO.Server', @o_svr out

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at create server:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_svr

goto cleanup

end

-- Connect to the server:

exec @hr = sp_OAMethod @o_svr, 'Connect', null, @Server

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at connect to server:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_svr

goto cleanup

end

-- Get the MDStores property from the Server:

exec @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @o_svr,'MDStores', @o_mds OUT

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at get getting Server MDStores:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_svr

goto cleanup

end

-- Get the database from the MDStores:

exec @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @o_mds,'Item',@o_db OUT,@Database

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at get database:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_mds

goto cleanup

end

-- get the MDStores property from the database:

exec sp_OADestroy @o_mds

exec @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @o_db,'MDStores', @o_mds OUT

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at get database MDStores:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_db

goto cleanup

end

-- get the Cube from the MDStores

exec @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @o_mds,'Item',@o_cube OUT, @Cube

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at get Cube:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_mds

goto cleanup

end

if @Partition is null -- Process the entire Cube, not just a single partition

begin

exec @hr = sp_OAMethod @o_cube, 'Process', null, @PROCESS_DEFAULT

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at process Cube:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_cube

goto cleanup

end

else -- just process the specified Partition

begin

-- Get the MDStores property of the Cube:

exec sp_OADestroy @o_mds

exec @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @o_cube,'MDStores', @o_mds OUT

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at get Cube MDStores:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_cube

goto cleanup

end

-- Get the partition to process:

exec @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @o_mds,'Item',@o_part OUT, @Partition

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at get Parition:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_mds

goto cleanup

end

-- Process the partition:

exec @hr = sp_OAMethod @o_part, 'Process', null, @PROCESS_DEFAULT

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at process Partition:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_part

goto cleanup

end

-- And unlock all objects on the server:

exec @hr = sp_OAMethod @o_svr, 'UnlockAllObjects'

if @hr <> 0

begin

print 'Error at unlock all server objects:'

exec sp_OAGetErrorInfo @o_svr

goto cleanup

end

cleanup:

if @o_mds is not null exec sp_OADestroy @o_mds

if @o_Part is not null exec sp_OADestroy @o_Part

if @o_cube is not null exec sp_OADestroy @o_cube

if @o_db is not null exec sp_OADestroy @o_db

if @o_svr is not null exec sp_OADestroy @o_svr

I'm back ... with some news!

Jeff Smith — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:04:35 GMT

I apologize for not posting any new content in quite some time, but now I am back and will soon start posting on a (hopefully!) regular basis once again.

The reason for my hiatus was a pretty good one, though: I recently became a father with the birth of my son Benjamin on October 2, 2008! He is doing great and already knows that he should always do his formatting at the client and never within the database. He's a natural!

As if that wasn't enough, I also found out recently I have been named as a 2009 SQL Server MVP! Now I can finally get a decent seat at a restaurant by pulling the "do you know who I am?" routine. In all seriousness, though, I am very honored and excited by the award and I intend to live up to it in 2009 by continuing to update this blog and help users out in the SQLTeam forums.

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog and participates in the discussions, and I promise more updates are coming soon. If you have any specific topics or ideas for a blog post that you think I may be able to cover effectively, just let me know.

Best Regards,

Jeff Smith
SQL Server MVP

(Hey -- I like the way that looks!)

SQL Server 2005 Foreign Key Constraints: SET NULL and SET DEFAULT

Jeff Smith — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:56:49 GMT

Most people know about cascading updates and deletes, but did you know there are two other foreign key constraint options you can use to maintain referential integrity?

Read all about them in my latest article over at SQLTeam.com.

These features, introduced with SQL Server 2005, haven't got a lot of publicity, but they can be very useful. I just used the SET NULL option recently for the first time (inspiring me to put together an article on it) and it works great.

Database Column Names != Report Headings

Jeff Smith — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:43:26 GMT

Always remember that the column names returned in a result set do not have to be the same as what you eventually output at your presentation layer.

For example, suppose you have stored procedure that accepts a @CurrentYear parameter and returns a sales variance between the current year and the previous year for each customer. I often see programmers struggling with writing dynamic SQL to produce output like this:

CustomerID   2008 Total    2007 Total   Variance
----------   ----------    ----------   --------
ABC          $100          $50          $50
DEF          $200          $250         -$50

That is, the names of the columns vary based on the data; that is not a good way to return data from your database! A much better result set to return is simply this:

CustomerID   CurrentYear   PrevYear   Variance
----------   ----------    --------- --------
ABC          $100          $50        $50
DEF          $200          $250       -$50

Notice that with that set of columns, no dynamic SQL is needed, and the column names returned are always constant regardless of the value of the @CurrYear parameter.

As mentioned, the fact that your data set has columns labelled "CurrentYear" and "PrevYear" does not mean that you cannot re-label them any way that you like on your report or web page.

If your client code called the stored procedure and provided a @CurrentYear parameter, then it knows exactly what "CurrentYear" and "PrevYear" represent, and you can easily label the columns in the final result exactly as needed with simple formulas or a few lines of code.

Remember that in the world of relational database programming, table names and column names should be constant -- only the data itself should change. Focus on returning consistently structured data from your database, and let your client applications handle the labeling of columns to make them look nice.

How To Calculate the Number of Week Days Between two Dates

Jeff Smith — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:39:43 GMT

If the start date and end date are both week days, then the total number of week days in between is simply:

(total difference in days) - (total difference in weeks) * 2

DateDiff(dd, @start, @end) - DateDiff(ww, @start, @end)*2

... since the DateDiff() function with weeks returns the number of week "boundaries" that are crossed; i.e., the number of weekends.

If you have a table of holidays, then you can simply subtract them out as well:

DateDiff(dd, @start, @end) - 

DateDiff(ww, @start, @end)*2 -  

(select count(*) from holidays where holiday_date between @start and @end)

Now, what if the start day or the end day is on a weekend? In that case, you need to define what to do in those situations in your requirements.

For example, if the start date is Sunday, Nov 20th, and the end day is Monday, Nov 21st -- how many week days are between those dates? There's no universal correct answer; it could be 0, or 1, or perhaps even "undefined" (null) depending on your needs.

Convert input explicitly at your client; don't rely on the database to "figure it out"

Jeff Smith — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:12:33 GMT

A common mistake beginners make when working with SQL is trying to format their output at the database layer, as opposed to simply doing this at the presentation layer (i.e., client application, reporting tool, web page, etc). I've covered that quite a bit in various blog posts, but I've only touched upon another similar issue which I feel is equally as important and also commonly mishandled.

In the SqlTeam forums, I often see code that accepts DateTime input in the form of a string value (say, from a TextBox on a web form) and uploads that value to the database written like this:

SqlCommand c = new SqlCommand();
c.CommandText = "insert into SomeTable (DateCol) values ('" + txtDate.Text + "')";
c.ExecuteNonQuery();

Now, I think that hopefully even most beginners will agree that this is bad code. The primary issue, of course, is SQL Injection. Avoiding SQL Injection is very easy to do using Parameters. So, let's say that you rewrite this code using parameters like this:

SqlCommand c = new SqlCommand();
c.CommandText = "insert into SomeTable (DateCol) values (@DateVal)";
c.Parameters.AddWithValue("@DateVal",txtDate.Text);
c.ExecuteNonQuery();

Looking at that, it seems we have done quite a bit better and should be happy with the code. It works well, and no injection is possible. But there is still an issue! Why? The txtDate.Text property returns a string, not a DateTime! And, since we are not setting the data type of the parameter explicitly, the parameter being passed is a string (i.e., VARCHAR or NVARCHAR) value, not a true DateTime value. This means that SQL Server must implicitly cast your string to a DateTime to store it in your table, and this may or may not work successfully, or as expected, depending on how the string is formatted.

I've said it over and over and I'll say it again: The concept of formatting dates should never be something that your database code should ever worry about. The database layer should be accepting DateTime data from clients, and returning DateTime data to your clients. Where and how the client got the data before passing it to the database, or what the client does with the data in terms of formatting after receiving it from the database is of no concern to the database itself.

So, we might decide that to fix this, we can simply declare the data type of the parameter explicitly:

SqlCommand c = new SqlCommand();
c.CommandText = "insert into SomeTable (DateCol) values (@DateVal)";
c.Parameters.Add("@DateVal", SqlDbType.DateTime).Value = txtDate.Text;
c.ExecuteNonQuery();

It appears that now we are in good shape, right? Actually -- no! There is still an implicit conversion happening, because we are still passing a string value -- the txtDate.Text property -- to the parameter, not a true DateTime!

Let's try one more time. How can we avoid these implicit conversions? The answer that question is always the same: Convert explicitly! Your client application is fully capable of handling the parsing, validation, and conversion of that string to a true DateTime value, so go ahead and do it:

DateTime dateval = DateTime.Parse(txtDate.Text); // plus more code to validate, of course

SqlCommand c = new SqlCommand();
c.CommandText = "insert into SomeTable (DateCol) values (@DateVal)";
c.Parameters.Add("@DateVal", SqlDbType.DateTime).Value = dateval;
c.ExecuteNonQuery();

Now we are in business! Before we even create the SqlCommand object, we have a true DateTime value that we are ready to pass along to SQL Server. Our SQL code doesn't need to worry about formatting, parsing, converting, or anything -- it is being passed a completely valid piece of data with the correct type. In short, we can now be sure that whatever value we came up with for the date in our client code is exactly the value that will be stored in our database. That's the idea, right?

So, please, don't rely on your database code to validate your input. Don't just pass along generic string data and "hope" that at the end of the day the database can "handle it". Eliminate the chance of anything going wrong and write your code to explicitly cast and convert and validate any and all input before the database even comes into the picture.

The MailBag --- Super-Sized Edition! String Parsing, Crosstabs, SQL Injection, and more.

Jeff Smith — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:32:51 GMT

OK, boys and girls, it's time for the mailbag! There's lots of stuff to cover, so let's get to it!

---

Greg E writes:

Hello Jeff,

I just found your blog and wanted to know if you could point me in the right direction or possibly toss me a solution.

I am looking at a badly formed telelphone number column in a MS SQL Server db. Entries contain '(555) 555-1212' or '555.555.1212, etc. Do you know how I would go about stripping out unwanted characters from the telephone number?

Thanks for the brain cycles.

Greg -- A simple UDF should do the trick for you. For example, something like this:

create function NumbersOnly(@txt varchar(1000))
returns varchar(100)
as
begin
    declare @i int
    declare @ret varchar(100)

    select @i = 1, @ret = ''

    while (@i <= len(@txt))
        select @ret = @ret + case when substring(@txt,@i,1) like '[0-9]'
                                  then substring(@txt,@i,1) else ''
                             end,
               @i = @i + 1

    return @ret
end

With that, you can write something like this:

select ID, dbo.NumbersOnly(PhoneColumn) as PhoneNumbersOnly
from YourTable

Over at SQLTeam's script library forum, there is a thread with a bunch of parsing functions that you may find useful if your needs are more complex.

And, in case you missed it, be sure to read this post.

---

In response to my blog post on passing arrays to stored procedures, Juan writes:

I know is not the right solution, but I have to say it for the sake of completeness of the discussion: if the amount of items in your "array parameter" is limited (say, for example 5 or 10 items), you can always use optional parameters (i.e. assign them to null when declaring them in the SP), then insert them in a temp table or do whatever you want with them, without using dynamic,nor xml, nor string manipulation.

Great point, something I missed in my article entirely. Sometimes, it may make sense to declare @Val1, @Val2, ... @ValN parameters if there aren't too many and there's a clearly defined limit. Thanks for bringing that up, Juan. The simplest solution is usually the best, and in some cases that's probably all you need. You still have clearly defined parameters with strong typing and no parsing, and those are the main issues with CSV parameters that I wanted to avoid.

---

Marc writes:

We have three tables. They all share the same "type" of primary key: let's say ActivityCode. I need to pull data using an ActivityCode, but there is a catch. If table 1 has the data, I want to use it. If table 2 has the data and Table 1 does not I want to use Table 2. If table 3 has the data and Table 1 and Table 2 does not, I want to use that. The ActivityCode can be found in both Table 1 and Table 2. Once I determine which table i am using I will need to do several other inner and/or outer joins with other tables. I am using JDBC. I want to be able to do this using a single SQL statement, but I am willing to use multiple statements if it makes more sense. I just need to keep it to a single transaction under JDBC.

Marc -- I think what you are looking for is described here. The key is to OUTER JOIN to all of your tables, and then use a CASE expression to determine which of those joined tables has the data you need.

--

Mary writes:

I struggled with a thorny SQL problem all day yesterday and found your post on set based thinking very helpful. I needed to write an update query that updated a table with many records with the same key from a table with the key and the corresponding new value. The table with new values didn't exist - I had to derive it from a different table showing the key, new value and date (the new value changed over time.)

Your observations that one needs to break the problem down into its simplest components helped me realize something else.

I made the classic rookie error of grabbing some code that did a similar type of update and try to hack it into my solution. When I finally realized I was going in the wrong direction (because my solution was getting messier and messier), I went back to the beginning.

I defined the problem in its simplest terms and learned I could do a simple "update A set A.value = B.value from A join B on B.key = A.key" .

I didn't realize I could update from but once the problem was simply defined a quick question to one of our senior engineers resulted in a quick answer leading to an elegant solution. The whole thing was completed in less than half an hour.

The moral of the story: Define the problem first! Don't even think about syntax until you have written a clear, concise spec from the problem just defined. Then if you find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time and/or the solution seems too messy or seems to run too long - google or talk to your colleagues.

Thanks for a great blog; your post made me realize it's more about how we think than throwing code at the problem - the code should be the last thing!

Thanks, Mary! I'm glad I would be of assistance. The "moral" that you wrote says it all. 90% of programming isn't writing code at all, it is simply defining what your code will do -- and that's always the hardest part!

---

In response to my post on grouping by month, Mark writes:

I'm so close! I've tried all the things in this article, but can't seem to do what I want to do. I've been tearing my hair out for days! Here's what I'm trying to do.

Basically I need a sql procedure that looks at an invoicing table that totals amounts by month/year and quarter at the same time. Here's how my table looks:

Project ID Date      Amount
1                3/11/08    10.00
1                4/18/08    10.00
1                6/22/08    10.00
2                3/01/08    10.00
2                9/15/08    10.00

I would like the output to have dynamic columns, so an output may look like:
Project ID Jan'08 Feb'08 Mar'08 Q1'08 Apr'08 May'08 Jun'08 Q2'08 Jul'08 Aug'08 Sep'08 Q3'08
1              0.00    0.00      10.00    10.00 10.00    0.00      10.00 20.00 0.00    0.00      0.00      0.00
2              0.00    0.00      10.00    10.00 0.00      0.00      0.00    0.00 0.00    0.00      10.00    10.00

I would like the query to know if there was no value in Jan & Feb'08, but still list all the months in Q1.

I'm not opposed to using a calendar table, but would like to try to avoid it if possible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Mark -- First off, never be afraid to use a calendar table! There is nothing hacky or unusual or tricky about them, they can make your life much easier, your code much shorter, and everything much more efficient. If grouping by month or some other time period is important to your reporting, then defining those months in a permanent, nicely indexed table makes perfect sense.

In this case, though, since you are outputting one column per month for a single year, I recommend to simply use CASE expressions to "cross tab" your data. You can alias your columns as M1,M2,M3...M12 and Q1-Q4 so that no matter what year you are running the report for, your columns will be consistently named, and you can let your presentation layer handle outputting nice column headers with the current year/month for each one.

So, all you really need is something like this:

select projectID, Y as [Year],
sum(case when m=1 then amount else 0 end) as M1,
sum(case when m=2 then amount else 0 end) as M2,
sum(case when m=3 then amount else 0 end) as M3,
sum(case when m in (1,2,3) then amount else 0 end) as Q1,
...
sum(case when m=12 then amount else 0 end) as M12,
sum(amount) as Total
from
(
select projectID, Amount, DatePart(Month, [Date]) as M, DatePart(Year, [Date]) as Y
from YourTable
where [Date] >= @StartDate and Date < @EndDate
) x

Of course, you'd define @StartDate and @endDate as '01-01-2008' and '01-01-2009', respectively.

---

In this comment, Stewy writes:

I have an issue with both DISTINCT and GROUP BY.

The issue is that using either one, the results comes back ordered as if using order by.

I need the unique results in the order they are in the database. How can I do this? Thanks

Stewy -- Relational databases have no obligation to store data in any specific order, or to keep track of the order that things were entered, or to return things "as they are in the database." There is no such thing as getting data out "the way it is stored" because a relational database may move or re-order data temporarily to efficiently execute a query depending on indexes available. You must always explicitly specify how you want your results using an ORDER BY clause. If you want to keep track of the order that you added data to a table, you should have a "timestamp" column that records the exact moment each row was added via a DEFAULT value or a trigger. Or, at the very least, you can use an IDENTITY. Then, you can simply order by that column. This is a very important concept to understand when working with relational databases. Things are returned based on the data itself, not based on physical storage characteristics. I hope this helps.

---

In response to Always Use Parameters, Karuna writes:

Hi Jeff,
Just wondering if I build the Sql in Stored Procedure (Dynamic Sql) based on the parameters passed to stored proc, will it still be a possible candidate for Sql Injection? Basically I want to build the Sql in the stored procedure instead of doing it in .Net code as displayed in the article.

Dim cm As New SqlCommand("", YourConnection)
cm.CommandText = "DELETE FROM YourTable WHERE ID=@ID "
cm.Parameters.Add("@ID", SqlDbType.Int).Value = ID

If Name <> "" Then
cm.CommandText &= " And Name=@name"
cm.Parameters.Add("@Name", SqlDbType.VarChar).Value = Name
End If
If TranDate <> DateTime.MinValue Then
cm.CommandText &= " And TranDate = @TranDate"
cm.Parameters.Add("@TranDate", SqlDbType.DateTime).Value = TranDate

Hi Karuna -- you are absolutely 100% safe from SQL Injection by doing this. Remember, SQL Injection is not about genereal SQL concatenation or about building a SQL statement dynamically. It only can happen when you concatenate user input into a SQL string and execute it. If you put together a big SQL statement via concatenation but you only incorporate user input via parameters, there's no need for scrubbing data or worrying in any way about SQL Injection -- it will never happen, under any circumstance.

Avoiding SQL Injection is the easiest thing in the world -- simply do things the easy and correct way and you'll never need to worry about it. It's like if there was a big controversy in the news about thousands of people crashing their cars because they are driving them with decorative tin foil covering their windshields, and asking the experts "how can we solve this crisis?" Should we cut holes in the tin foil, or add mirrors, or incorporate a camera and a tv monitor? Uh .. no. You should just take the tin foil off of your windshield and do things the easy, simple and correct way and don't make things over complicated. That's basically what this whole SQL Injection thing is about -- bad programmers doing stupid things when all they need to do is write decent code the easy way -- simply by using parameters.

---

Gocs writes:

I have tried to compute the number of hours based on the datetime in MS SQL 2005. However, I am not sure the hours is correct. Do you have any idea on how to do it correctly?

Gocs -- I think you really need to read this very carefully. I'll be waiting!

The Golden Rule of Data Manipulation

Jeff Smith — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:48:41 GMT

Introduction

There is a very simple rule when it comes to storing (and returning) data, which I see violated all the time, making life so much more complicated for everyone involved. In case you haven't noticed, that's a common theme I discuss here on this blog -- different ways programmers make life more difficult for themselves, instead of simply following good practices and doing things the easy way. This is yet another example of that situation.

The "Golden Rule of Data Manipulation" is a simple, but important rule that you should always follow when designing a database, writing database code, or really writing any application code at all for that matter:

"It is always easier and more flexible to combine data elements rather than to break them apart"

In other words: Concatenation is easy. Parsing is hard. Often, very hard -- or even impossible depending on the data.

Problems with Parsing

It is amazing how often I see people struggling with "difficult SQL problems" such as:

Working with CSV lists of values in a single column, such as "1,3,56,2"
Breaking out a FirstName/MiddleName/LastName/Suffix from a single "Name" column
Parsing address strings into City/State/ZIP, or Number/Street/Unit
Parsing Phone Numbers to get just an area code, or to take different phone formats and present them all uniformly
Figuring out how to calculate the Day,Month, and/or Year from different string values such as "23-Jan-08", "2008-02", "20070303", "03032007"

And on and on it goes....

Now, sometimes you inherit or import data that needs to be parsed -- that's a fact of life. You've got to figure out how to do it, and the key in those cases is to accept that because the data itself is essentially random, nothing you can write will perfectly work 100% of the time on all of it. Often, the best you can do is handle most of the data, and then do some manual clean up.

Parsing strings can be a very difficult task for any programmer, and the challenge isn't writing the code, it's coming up with the algorithm (another common theme on this blog). Consider my new favorite example of why parsing a single Name column into a First/Middle/Last is not as easy as it seems:

Oscar De La Hoya

How would your algorithm parse that one? Never mind prefixes such as "Dr." and suffixes such as "Jr."!

Please don't interpret what I am saying as a programming challenge -- I understand that it is possible to write long code with a list of exceptions or rules and have that algorithm work pretty well in most cases. The point is that writing that algorithm is a lot of work, running it will be inefficient, and it will never be exact because the data itself that is being processed is essentially random. It's just like the old saying: "garbage in, garbage out". Still one of my favorites, after all these years, and it still applies!

A Data Model that requires Parsing = A Poor Data Model

So, we need to accept that sometimes you've got to parse data like this. And that's OK; it happens, it can be done, even if some manual work is often involved.

However, there's no excuse when you design your database, your SQL code, or applications so that free-form data must be parsed, when you can simply design it correctly in the first place and store your data already broken out into the smallest possible units with the correct data types.

If breaking out a contact's name into First, Last, Middle, etc is important to your application, then you should force the point of data entry to accept input broken out into those columns. The same goes for phone numbers, addresses, and so on. Any time you have the option of accepting input as clean, short, raw, segments of data you should always do it. Once you have data at that smaller resolution, it is trivial to combine it any way that you want for presentation, formatting, filtering, and so on.

It may seem like overkill to break out a phone number into 4 columns:

AreaCode
Exchange
Number
Extension

And, in fact, it might be more complicated than that if you need to deal with international phone numbers. You may look at your tables, and your code, and even the UI that accepts these fields and think "that is way too precise and unnecessary, breaking out phone numbers like this sure makes things complicated!"

But by doing this, and only accepting user input that follows precise rules of what is allowed in these fields, and storing each of them in their own column, you can now easily and efficiently:

Sort these numbers any way you want, without worrying about extra characters like parenthesis or dashes, or leading 1s, messing things up
Filter quickly on an area code without the need to use LIKE, and again worrying about extra characters getting in the way
Present the phone number quickly and easily any way you want without any parsing, be it as 123.123.1345 x123 or "(123) 123-1345 extension 123", or anything you want.
Validate your phone numbers, ensuring you have all the necessary parts and they are the proper length, without worrying about parsing strings

Considering doing any of those things if your data is stored in random strings like:

1-123-124-1234
(123) 124-1234
123-124-1234, ex. 123
123.124.1234 x123
(123)124.1234 ext. 123
1 123 124 1234 123

and so on ... Not so easy in that case, just as parsing simple "Name" columns into First/Last, or addresses into Number/Street/Unit is not so easy as well.

Again, this is not a programming challenge -- I am sure it can done. (In fact, phone numbers are generally the easiest because you can usually just ignore anything other than digits.) Most of us have done it before. But designing something in such a way that parsing is required to do simple filtering, sorting, or formatting, is a bad design.

It's Not About the UI

As I wrote here, you should never think "I want to display phone numbers like 123.123.1234, so I should store them and return them that way." You should always think "How can I break this down into small, concrete parts that are easily validated and easy to combine any way I want at any time?"

So, what if you need fine detail when storing addresses, but you don't want your UI to present Street Number, Street Name, Unit Type, Unit Number as different data entry fields for usability or aesthetic reasons? That's fine, but that doesn't mean you should not set up your database properly. Your UI can certainly still present that one single "Address" text box for the user to fill out, parse that text at data entry, show the user the parsed result in multiple fields, and ask "Please verify for your address" or something along those lines.   Then, if not, the user can tweak the results and save it. If you do things along those lines, and focus on getting the data parsed and stored correctly at the earliest point possible, every other part of your code will be that much more efficient.

All of this applies not only to data storage, but to how data is returned and passed between tiers as well. Again, if you just return separate columns to your client application, instead of focusing on making them "look nice" in your database code by returning nothing but long, "pre-formatted" strings, your client can simply concatenate and format those columns any way it needs. And, different clients can format that same database output in different ways -- all without ever altering any database code!

Conclusion

In short, remember that writing concatenation is easy, efficient, and exact. Writing a parsing routine, on the other hand, is often none of those things.   You may not always be able to control the design of the data you are working with, but be sure that when you can, you do it right. If you find yourself using lots of LIKE expressions, or string parsing for simple data retrieval operations, something is wrong.   Time to fix up your database and your code, store the parsed and validated data permanently, and make things easier and cleaner for everyone.

Whether you are designing a schema, writing a SELECT, or writing code in any other programming language, remember that the Golden Rule of Data Manipulation always applies. Accept this rule, learn from it, and practice it, and you might be surprised to find that programming isn't quite as hard as you thought it was.

The Joy of Blog Feedback

Jeff Smith — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:43:05 GMT

Introduction

I have been writing my little blog here for some time now, and my favorite part of doing this is of course the feedback. It's always great to hear from the readers, to have mistakes corrected, to debate various topics and techniques, and to learn a lot about SQL and the various topics I discuss here.

At this point, I have received over 1,700 comments over the years, and while all of them are truly appreciated, I have noticed that unfortunately many of the, uh, less helpful comments do seem to consistently fall neatly into various categories.

Let's take a look at an example of a simple, typical blog post and some of the responses that often come back. If you write a blog of your own, or often read the feedback from other blogs, many of these may seem familiar to you.

A Typical Blog Post

Today, I have a simple tip for beginner SQL programmers. When writing a SELECT, you can add a WHERE clause to filter the results that are returned.

For example, to only return rows for CustomerID 345, you can write:

SELECT ...
FROM YourTable
WHERE CustomerID = 345

As you can see, it is very simple. You can use any boolean expression to filter the results as needed. Try it out! If you have any questions, let me know.

Some Typical Responses

The subtle blog spammer (that you initially mistake for a nice complement):

Very helpful site! Good advice! From Joe at www.some-random-site-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-sql.com

The person who doesn't seem to get it:

Ummm ... what good does this do when I want to sort? You should fix the code.

The person that really doesn't get it:

The problem with that is it will only return results for one customer.

The person that somehow takes away the exact opposite of what you wrote:

I disagree, this will not return all customers other than 345 and this is definitely not something for advanced SQL Programmers, it's probably better for beginners.

The script kiddie (who just wants to cut and paste your code, not read or learn anything):

LOL, that doesnt even run 4 me! I get errorz that sez "YourTable" does not exist! Plz help!! thnx!

The very clichéd, mindless "anti-Microsoft ranter":

You only have to use WHERE clauses because Bill Gates wants more $$, you are a shill!! Micro$oft sucks, you should use an iPhone for this! MySQL automagically filters results for you!

The "skimmer" (who just skims the post missing most of it):

Nice, but is there any way to filter for just one customer?

The "repeater" (who just repeats what you've already written):

A better solution is to write WHERE CustomerID = 345, it works better. It is also fast because less rows are returned. Using WHERE is a good way to filter a SELECT.

The "know-it-all complainer":

That is the stupidest advice I ever read, why would you want to ever do this? Just use a parameter, or an ORM tool-- this will not scale! I sure hope CustomerID isn't a VARCHAR -- then you have an implicit conversion happening, your indexes are shot, your server will overheat, and your wife will leave you for your mechanic. Also, 345 is too large if CustomerID is a tinyint.

The random, unrelated question asker:

Good advice. Thnx. How to insert into the table?

The "misunderstander":

If I add this to all of my scripts, only data for one customer will ever be returned. I am not sure this is a good idea. Also, this code will not work in Java and doesn't follow the HTML 4.0 specification.

The very rare polite and helpful typo alerter:

Hey there, you have a typo in the first sentence -- should be "filter", not "fitler"! Just letting you know, thanks for a great post!

The much more common typo alerter:

You wrote FITLER not FILTER, your an idiot!! if you cannot write English how can you write SQL ??? Learn to spell!

Summary

Please, don't misunderstand, I mean this all in good fun. I love feedback, and please, keep it coming. It's what makes this and every other blog a fun place to visit.

In fact, I realize that I left out the most annoying feedback of all! That's right, the Thin-Skinned, Overly-Defensive Blog Author Who Feels the Need to Respond to Everything:

Did you even read what I wrote? I did not say that. And, yes, I did spell "monkey" wrong, so sue me! Remind me to fire my editor.... or maybe I should refund your subscription fee? Oh, wait, this blog is free! So what the heck are you complaining about? Why don't you go bother some MySQL blogger? I hear they usually write at a 5th grade level which is probably more appropriate for your intellect. Jerk!

Yeah, comments like those are definitely the worst of all! Thank you for putting up with my feedback, now that I think of it!

The Truth about "Cursor Busting" in SQL

Jeff Smith — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:56:02 GMT

Let's say you are called in to troubleshoot a stored procedure that is performing poorly.

You dive in to investigate and this is what you find:

create procedure ProcessProducts
as
    declare @Products cursor, @ProductID int
    set @Products = cursor for select ProductID from Products order by ProductID
    open @Products

    fetch next from @Products into @ProductID

    while (@@FETCH_STATUS=0)
        begin
        exec DoSomething @ProductID
        fetch next from @Products into @ProductID
        end

    deallocate @Products

Ah ha! A cursor! It seems we have identified the bottleneck: Clearly, the performance problems are because the code is not doing things in a set-based manner, but rather by processing rows one at a time using a dreaded cursor. This cursor is opening up the Products table, looping through the rows one at a time, and calling the "DoSomething" stored procedure for each ProductID. As we all know, cursors are not the way to go when writing SQL code; this cursor should eliminated and replaced with a cleaner, more efficient (and more socially acceptable!) solution.

So, how we do optimize this? Well, a commonly suggested approach is to eliminate the CURSOR by replacing it with a WHILE loop:

    declare @ProductID int
    set @ProductID = -99999

    while (@ProductID is not null)
        begin
        set @ProductID = (select top 1 ProductID
                          from Products
                        where ProductID > @ProductID
                        order by ProductID asc)

        exec DoSomething @ProductID

        end

Instead of declaring a CURSOR to loop through the table, we now are using "set-based" code and our problems seem to be solved. The cursor is gone, our code looks much cleaner, we've tested it and it works properly, so off to production it goes. Another cursor has been busted!

Right?

Actually ... no.

You see, eliminating cursors is not about syntax. It is not about searching for the word "cursor" in your code and just replacing it with a WHILE loop that does the same thing. Optimizing and replacing cursors involves much more. We can never optimize any cursor code until we look deeper into what exactly is happening when we "process" each of those rows. In this case, we need to find out what that "DoSomething" procedure is actually doing.

Suppose the DoSomething procedure is generating a report and sending an email to the "Product Manager" for each product that contains status information, and then logging this email message into a table somewhere.

If that is the case, what have we just gained by replacing our CURSOR?

Honestly -- not much, if anything at all. Because of the task at hand, we may very well need to process rows in the Product table one-by-one to send our emails and generate the report, and the bottleneck here is not the cursor code at all, but rather the report generation and maybe sending the email.   Eliminating the cursor code probably gains us nothing here. If you need to process rows one at a time, go ahead and use a cursor -- that's what they are there for!   Replacing a perfectly fine, simple cursor with a WHILE loop might even make your code longer, or more confusing, or even less efficient depending on circumstances.

For example, what if we need to process the Products ordered by Region, then Product Name, for whatever reason. Our cursor code is simple:

set @Products = cursor for
    select ProductID
    from Products
    order by Region, ProductName

All that we needed to change was our ORDER BY clause. Now, how would we write this as a WHILE loop? Is it possible? Sure. Will it be as simple and clean as using a cursor? No, it won't. (Though ROW_COUNT() makes this much easier than it used to be)

Now, I am not here to say that cursors are "good", but if you really need to process rows one by one, go ahead and proudly use a cursor. Replacing cursors isn't about processing rows one-by-one in a different way (i.e., using a WHILE loop instead), it is about not processing rows one-by-one at all!

Let's consider another scenario: What if the DoSomething stored procedure is checking to see if the Product's ExpireDate is greater than today's date, and if so, it is updates the Status column for that Product to 'X'.

In that situation, what have we gained by rewriting ProcessProducts without a cursor, and using a WHILE loop instead? The answer is, once again: nothing! In fact, we potentially have once again made our code more confusing or even less efficient than a cursor might be! Remember, the bottleneck isn't the cursor syntax -- it is the fact that we are processing rows one at a time. Replacing the cursor with the WHILE loop didn't solve this problem, did it?

So, looking now at both of the scenarios I presented for the DoSomething stored procedure, it should be clear that we did not fix anything by replacing the cursor in either case simply by writing a WHILE loop. If that's all you are doing, don't bother replacing the cursor at all. You haven't optimized anything.

As I said before, the art of replacing a cursor is not a find-and-replace syntax change operation -- it is a fundamental change in how you process your data. As in the Product report generation and email example, it may be that we simply need to process rows one by one, and thus no further optimization is possible from a SQL point of view. In situations like updating the Product table, however, we do not need to process the rows individually -- we can do everything in one single UPDATE statement. Thus, in order to determine how to optimize the ProcessProducts stored procedure, we needed to dig deeper into entire process as a whole, which included examining the DoSomething stored procedure and determining the full scope of exactly what this "ProcessProducts" stored procedure is doing.

So, if "DoSomething" is updating the Products table as specified, we now know that a good replacement for our cursor code doesn't result in a WHILE loop and calling a separate stored procedure over and over at all -- it results a true, set-based solution:

create procedure ProcessProducts
as
Update Products set Status='X' where ExpireDate > getdate()

And THAT is how you optimize a cursor! No loops, no calling of another stored procedure for each row in a table, no "find-and-replace" cursor code removal. We examined the entire process, and rewrote the entire process, to get it done quicker and shorter and faster without cursors or loops.

Always remember: Replacing a cursor isn't about rewriting your syntax, it is about redesigning your algorithm.

Log Buffer #98

Jeff Smith — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:09:46 GMT

Hello and welcome to the 98th edition of Log Buffer. My name is Jeff Smith and I will hosting this week's exciting episode. If, for some reason, you are not completely satisfied with this edition, simply write in and complain to Dave over at The Pythian Group and you will receive Log Buffer #99 absolutely free! Now that is a guarantee you can feel good about. OK, let's get to work.

I have only limited exposure to both PostgreSQL and MySQL, but I have often wondered why MySQL is so popular while it seems that PostgreSQL has the superior features. Over at Xaprb, they attempt to answer that very question. Be sure to read the comments from that post, and check out the big discussion from that article over at reddit as well. The theory I like the best? MySQL is easier to pronounce! (How do you pronounce "PostgreSQL" anyway?)

Speaking of MySQL, Sheeri Cabral points out that MySQL's website certainly doesn't do the product any favors, and there's also a good discussion at Xaprb on why MySQL is Free Software but not Open Source. If you ever wanted to add a new Unicode collation to MySQL, Alexander Barkov and Peter Gulutzan provide all the information you'll need. Peter at the MySql Performance Blog tells us that MySQL lacks a good memory profiling tool, and based on his feedback, others seem to agree. (No, not those Others!) Speaking of MySQL feature requests, Justin Swanhart asks "Why does INFORMATION_SCHEMA fail to show information about TEMPORARY tables?" and also lets us know that his materialized view stored procedures for MySQL have been OKed for release. Sunny Walia (what a great name -- is it possible to not be a fun person with a name like that?) tells us how to install innotop to monitor innodb information in real-time and wonders "Oh dear MySQL slave, where did you put those rows?" Going back to the MySQL Performance Blog, Vadim warns us of a dangerous MySQL command; be sure to keep that one locked safely away from the kids.

Regarding a product I actually know a little about, Kalen Delany has a nice list of Free SQL Server Troubleshooting Tools to check out. If you haven't seen it yet, my co-blogger here at SQLTeam Mladen has an amazingly popular list of Free SQL Server Tools that might make your life a little easier that was published a while back but it is always worth mentioning. While you are visiting Mladen's blog, don't miss his latest post on getting immediate deadlock notifications for SQL Server 2005. Also, be sure to leave him lots of comments telling him that his blog is great but that he is your second favorite SQL Server blogger -- after me, of course!

Still on the topic of SQL Server, Jamie Thomson provides us with a tip for ensuring that your root folder is valid when using SSIS. Denis Gobo asks: What did you do to master SQL? (Interestingly enough, for me it was by learning MS Access first!) Tony Rogerson warns us of the performance implications of using Row_Number() in non-recursive CTE's. And Paul S. Randal describes a CHECKDB bug that people are hitting; thankfully, he says that "you can only hit this bug if you ALREADY have corruption, that it's quite rare, and that there is a workaround."

Everyone enjoys a good analogy, right? After all, a good analogy is like an ice cream cone: they both are ... hmmm ... OK, well, that's not a good analogy at all. Never mind. Speaking of bad analogies, I bet that unlike Peter Gulutzan you never really thought about the expression "half baked" before and how it relates to MySQL features. Well, now there's your chance! (Of course, a pessimist would prefer "half un-baked", but that's a discussion for another time.)

A big topic lately has been SQL Injection attacks. I always find this funny because this is the easiest problem to avoid in the history of programming; as CodeAssembly tells us, "Never concatenate user input to your queries, without exceptions." That's really all there is to it -- do that, and you are good to go. As I've written before, using parameters is not only safer, but your code is much shorter and simpler than if you concatenate strings all day long.

Federico Cargnelutti gives us an introduction on managing and applying database changes with LiquiBase, an "open source, DBMS-independent library for tracking, managing and applying database changes." I have never used LiquiBase, but sounds like something worth looking into.

While reading Magnus Hagander's PostgreSQL Blog, I found out that Yahoo claims it has the largest SQL database in a production environment -- and they use PostgreSQL. Impressive! Peter Eisentraut checks in from PGCon Day One, which included a presentation of his on porting Oracle Applications to PostgreSQL. For those of you out there using Max OS X, Perldiver has summarized instructions on building PostgreSQL on Mac OS X. Going off on a tangent, they just opened a new Apple store here in Boston on Boylston street. I visited it this weekend after getting my usual bad haircut next door. My verdict on the store? It sure looks nice, but I had no luck finding a new 5 1/4" floppy drive for my Apple II. Try to do better next time, Apple!

James McGovern offers some praise for Mark Wilcox of Oracle. Why? Because Mark has been doing some must-read blogging over at the Oracle.com blogs. Getting back to my favorite topic, which is coding SQL, Michael Armstrong-Smith instructs the Oracle crowd on using CASE to solver Outer Join issues. Shay Shmeltzer provides some tips on creating a master with two details on the same page when using ADF.

Sticking with Oracle links, Pete Finnigan ponders read only tables or read only users, and notes that in Oracle a read-only user "has approximately 27,000 other privileges because of grants to PUBLIC. This is the killer issue as because of this it is in fact not possible to create a read-only user." Hmm ... only 27,000? Come on, that doesn't seem that bad to me! Eddie Awad tells us about the Lazy Developer's way to populate a Surrogate Key and over at the Oracle Scratchpad, Jonathan Lewis provides some helpful links on Index Efficiency. Finally, if you are looking to install Oracle Database 11g Release 1 on Fedora 9 (and who isn't?), everything you need to know is covered over at Oracle-Base.

Now, if you're like me, you hate DBAs. Ah, just kidding, of course we all love our Database Administration Overlords (and I'm not just saying that because most of the people reading this probably are DBAs.) However, even the best DBAs out there occasionally make mistakes. If you have some horror stories of your own to share, or if you simply want to take pleasure in the misfortune of others, be sure to check out Kalen Delany's call for DBA Blunders. (Of course, to be fair, even us developers occasionally make mistakes.) To help avoid future blunders, consider this advice: Do not use Windows System Restore as a backout plan for SQL Server Service Packs, Cumulative Updates, or HotFixes. Also, Tara here at SQLTeam reminds us to optimize your tempdb and even provides a helpful script. I'd like to add my own helpful tip for DBAs: Schedule regular database backups! Remember, you read it here first.

Previewing the upcoming SQL Server 2008, SQLTeam's Derek discusses the Data Profiling Utility with SQL Server 2008. It sure seems like a nice tool, but that still may not make people any less nervous about SQL 2008. (Heck, my team is still nervous about SQL Server 2005!) Aaron Betrand urges people to vote if you want IntelliSense in SSMS 2008 to also support SQL Server 2005, which seems like a great idea to me, and Linchi Shea has a quick analysis of SQL Server 2008 Page Compression and its performance impact on table scans. Finally, Jamie Thomson dissects the fuzzyness of SQL Server 2008. To me, "fuzziness" is what happens to my vision after drinking too many mojitos, but Jamie is discussing a new feature in SSIS 2008 so give it a read.

I've always believed that you don't truly know all there is to know about databases until you understand the raw data structures of tables and indexes and so on. Over at MSDN Channel 9, there's a new series of videos on Data Structures and Algorithms, so be sure to watch if you want to know how database engines really work "under the hood". My enjoyment of the video was unfortunately interrupted by horrible flashbacks from my CS310 days.

Moving away from relational databases, Jim Wilson helps us to understand HBase and BigTable. Apparently, HBase is the open source implementation of Google's BigTable database, which is described as a "sparse, distributed, persistent multidimensional sorted map." In layman's terms, that means "a database with wicked huge tables."

For those looking for a laugh, be sure to read Andrew Calvett's MS SQL Server Book of Wisdom. It reminds me quite a bit of my infamous and widely misinterpreted Top 10 Things I Hate About SQL Server post from way back in the olden days. Be careful, Andrew: sometimes folks don't get it if your jokes are too subtle! (Of course, in my case, it could be that my jokes just weren't that funny.)

Well, that's all for this week. Thanks, Dave, for giving me an opportunity to write this week's Log Buffer. It was lot of fun and a welcome opportunity for me to spend more time than I usually do reading lots of great blog posts from around the internet. Have a great weekend everyone!

Implementing "Interfaces" in SQL

Jeff Smith — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:06:04 GMT

My latest article has just been published over at SQLTeam:

Implementing Table Interfaces

When I wrote a Table Inheritance article a few months back, the technique shown was pretty standard and straight-forward. As I was writing it, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to figure out a way to implement table interfaces as well, where different tables don't inherit from the same base class, but they still "implement" the same relations. That definitely was not as easy, and the end result isn't as clean and direct, but I hope this at least provides some ideas and at the very least it should provoke interesting comments and alternative approaches.

Need an Answer? Actually, No ... You Need a Question

Jeff Smith — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:04:33 GMT

Welcome!

The reason you were directed here is because you need assistance, and I am here to help. I am not, however, here to provide you with any answers! You see, it looks like the assistance you need is not finding an answer; it is rather that you need assistance finding a question.

As you know, there are all kinds of questions. Questions that test memory recall. Questions that test logic skills. Brain-teasers and mathematical questions and so on. But there is one requirement that all good questions must have in common before they can be answered:

A proper question MUST provide ALL of the information necessary in order for an answer to be given.

In other words, if you omit important information from a question, it doesn't matter how simple or easy that question is: It suddenly becomes very difficult, or even impossible, to answer.

For example, consider the following question:

"Am I wearing a hat?"

Seems pretty easy, right? No logic, no memorization, no trivia, no knowledge of any specific topic is required.

So ... what's the answer? Take a few minutes, think about it, write it down on a piece of scrap paper. I can wait, take your time ...

What's that, you say? You can't answer that simple question!? Why not? I stated it very clearly, it requires a simple YES or NO response, there's nothing tricky there. So, why would anyone have any trouble giving an answer to something so basic and simple?

The reason, of course, is because you can't see me. You have no way of knowing what I am wearing because I did not provide you enough information! As simple as it is, it cannot be answered; therefore, it is not a proper question!

Suppose, instead, I provided a picture of myself and asked "In this picture, am I wearing a hat?" And, in the picture, my head is clearly visible and the fact that I am wearing a Boston Red Sox cap is very clear. Would you be able to answer the question in that scenario? Of course! Suddenly, what was an impossible question to answer became very simple!

How did that happen?

It happened, of course, because I provided you enough information to answer the question! And that is the often problem with many of the questions we see day to day in forums asking for help. You cannot expect an answer unless you provide a proper question with all the necessary information. The majority of the effort by those helping others in these forums is not spent answering questions, it is spent trying to figure out what the heck the question actually is! And that is the problem; people don't seem to realize that they can't just randomly cut and paste code or ask vague questions without any context and expect to receive help!

Yet, requesting more information and details doesn't always go over so well ... Those looking for help seem to often have trouble understanding why the helpers need more info, why are they are so "anal" and "demanding" about minor things like database schemas, or sample data, or code samples. "How is that important?" they wonder. "Just answer the question and provide me with some help, please! An expert would know the answer!"

My goal today is to hopefully help you to understand why information and context is so important for even simple, basic, questions, and how providing that information suddenly transforms a poor question into a very good one that can be quickly and accurately answered.

Let's try another example:

"How do I get from work to Fenway Park?"

So, what do you think? Is that a good question that provides all of the information? It seems simple, right? It is just asking for basic directions. Yet, where is "work"? Is it asking for driving directions, or walking directions, or maybe which subway lines to take? Who knows!!?

As stated, this question simply cannot be answered! Yet, if I just thought about it a little and made sure to provide all of the necessary information, this "impossible" question with no answer suddenly becomes a very simple one:

"How I do get from 125 High Street, Boston, MA to Fenway Park via the subway?"

See the difference? Instead of just assuming that everyone knows where I work and what mode of transportation I am looking for, if I make sure to simply tell them, there is no uncertainty, no confusion, no guesswork, and the question can be answered. This isn't rocket science, right? Yet, these common-sense basics seem to elude many, many, people!

Would you drop your car off at a mechanic with a note on it that says:

"Car doesn't work. Plz fix. It is urgent! Thx!!"

I sure hope not. You'd explain what's wrong, right? It has trouble starting, it has a flat tire, there's smoke coming from beneath the hood, the steering wheel fell off, and so on. It's basic common sense that you would do everything you can to be sure that the mechanic has the information he needs to fix your car correctly and promptly, right? Shouldn't that same logic also apply when asking for help in forums?

Finally, let's try a SQL Server question:

"What is wrong with teh codez? it does not work! Plz Help!

select SaleID, Customer, Qty, Price
from SalesNumbesr

Thnx!"

Take a look at that question. It is a very simple SQL statement, right? There's nothing there that a beginner could not understand. Can you "spot" the problem and fix it?

Hmmm ... maybe you can, maybe you can't. You can't really be sure, can you? At this point, we can all try to guess what the problem is. What does "it does not work" even mean? Is "SalesNumbesr" a typo? Should it be "SalesNumbers" ? Is it returning too much data? not enough data? Incorrect data? Is it generating an error? And so on.

We could spend all day trying to guess what the question is and provide answers to those guesses, but if the guesses are wrong, the answers won't be so helpful, will they? On the previous question, what if you guessed that I work in Cleveland and provided directions for me to Fenway Park from there? Would that be helpful to me? Probably not, right? Most likely, it just wasted everyone's time.

So, getting back to the code .... what is wrong with it? Well, in SQL terms, the answer is: NULL! It does not exist. Until we are provided with more information, the question cannot be answered. Thus, it is not a question at all, just an incomplete fragment. As simple as the question looks, as basic as the T-SQL is, this "question" will stump even the greatest "experts" out there because an answer to this question simply does not exist.

If more information is provided, like this:

"Hi -- I currently have the code below:

select SaleID, Customer, Qty, Price
from SalesNumbesr

I would also like to return the total Amount for each Sale, which is the Qty multiplied by the Price. However, I am not sure how to add this to my current code. Can anyone please help?"

Suddenly, the question now is very clear and the answer is very simple! They just want to know how to add an expression to the result set. Just by providing a little more information, and not assuming that everyone knows what is happening outside of the context of what was written, something that was impossible to answer has become very easy.

I sure hope this is making sense.

In fact, taking this whole article to its logical conclusion, I think we can safely say:

"The more accurate and detailed information a question provides, the more accurate and detailed the answers will be."

In other words, a vague, incomplete question can only get, at best, vague, incomplete answers. But a question that spells out the entire situation very clearly will get, at best, a very clear and specific answer that works in that situation.

So, please, think of this when you ask questions in a forum. Consider the fact that no one knows your specific environment, or code, or application, or database except for YOU. And, no one can help you unless you are providing enough information for them to do so.

Just like the mechanic. Or someone giving driving directions. Or a doctor when you are sick. You provide them with the necessary information so they can help you, right? Consider doing the same to those providing you with (free!) programming advice.

. . .

(Feel free to provide this link to those who seen to have trouble understanding that you cannot read their mind when assisting them with programming help on forums.)