CREATE TABLE #tmpA(strId VARCHAR(32));
INSERT INTO #tmpA
	SELECT '1,2,3' UNION ALL
	SELECT '1,3,4' UNION ALL
	SELECT '2,3,4' UNION ALL
	SELECT '3,4,5';

You are probably saying “Bleh! That should not happen!! It violates the very basics of a good database design”.  And, you would be absolutely right – but unfortunately, while you and I are on the same page, the guy or girl who designed the original database might have been on a different planet. And for better or for worse, you are forced to adopt that problem child.

In any case, if you want to find all the rows in the table that have a specific item in the comma-delimited list, you can use the LIKE operator. For example, to find all the rows that have a “2″ in the string, I could write a select statement like this:

DECLARE @id INT; SET @id = 2;
SELECT   strId
FROM     #tmpA
WHERE    ','+strId+',' LIKE '%,'+CAST(@id AS VARCHAR(32))+',%';

On the left side of the LIKE operator, adding those commas to the beginning and end of strId column ensures that every token has a comma before and after it. On the right side, we again add commas to the beginning and end of the value we want to search for.

You can extend this to search against column values in another table. As an example:

-- CREATE A TEST TABLE WITH VALUES TO LOOK FOR
CREATE TABLE #tmpB( id INT );
INSERT INTO #tmpB
	SELECT 1 UNION ALL
	SELECT 2;

-- LOOK FOR ROWS IN TABLE A WHICH HAVE OCCURRENCES OF
-- VALUES IN TABLE A
SELECT
	a.strId,
	b.Id
FROM
	#tmpA a
	INNER JOIN #tmpB b ON
		','+a.strId+',' LIKE '%,'+CAST(b.Id AS VARCHAR(32)) + ',%'

1. A way to organize objects in SSMS explorer – organize by schema, ability to create folders etc.
2. Ability to document tables (just like you can document stored procedures and views in the scripts that create them).
3. A “TimeSpan” data type (sort of like the TimeSpan structure in .Net) that would allow you to do arithmetic.

Dear Fairy Godmother, in case you decided to drop by and peek, this is by no means a complete list. I reserve the right to add items as I remember them.  Think of this as a living document for now.

Among all of those, of my most favorite shortcuts (for SQL 2005) are the following:

• 1. control-k,control-c to comment a block of code and control-k,control-u to uncomment.
• 2. control-r to hide or show the output window
• 3. control-f6 to cycle through the open windows.

Try them out. You will love them!

While we are on the topic of keyboard shortcuts: At my previous employer one of the ways in which we used to judge an interview candidate was by their typing skills and whether or not they used keyboard short cuts.  We would give them a simple programming problem and give them half an hour or so to do it.  Even though we would not be sitting there watching over their shoulder while they did it, we observed them casually; and some of the things we watched for were typing skills and use of keyboard shortcuts.

I am not commenting on the merits or demerits of putting someone on the spot by asking them to write a program as part of a job interview, or whether or not use of keyboard shortcuts has any correlation to one’s skills as a software developer.  Nonetheless, I have to admit it, I made judgements based on the way in which they typed and used keyboard shortcuts.

By the way, if you use Visual Studio or BIDS, the same keyboard short cuts for commenting and cycling through windows that I listed above work there as well.

Another one that has turned out to be my favorite (thanks to Madhivanan for telling me about it) is Alt+F1 to view the definition of objects.

Because it uses a recursive CTE, it will work only on SQL 2005 or higher.

-- Calendar table, with a single column.
CREATE TABLE #tmpCalendar
(
   [Dt] DATETIME NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
);

DECLARE @start_date DATETIME;
DECLARE @end_date DATETIME;

-- I want to generate the calendar for Jan 1, 2011 to today.
SET @start_date = '20110101';
SET @end_date = GETDATE();

-- Calculate the number of days in the calendar
DECLARE @days INT;
SET @days = DATEDIFF(DAY,@start_date,@end_date)+1;

-- Recursive CTE to generate sequence of numbers, and use
-- that to insert the dates into the calendar table.
WITH N(n) AS
(
	SELECT 1
	UNION ALL
	SELECT n+1 FROM N WHERE n < @days
)
INSERT INTO	#tmpCalendar
SELECT DATEADD(DAY,n-1,@start_date) FROM N OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0);

-- See what is in the table; and then cleanup.
--SELECT * FROM #tmpCalendar;
--DROP TABLE #tmpCalendar;

This is my first blog post to this forum.

Come to think of it, this is my very first blog post ever!! And to think that I am 28 years old and never had a blog post up until now!!

I am of Indian origin – that would be the tech support, cardiologist, motel owner type of Indian, not the native American kind.

Currently, I live in Stamford, CT with my husband.

I used to be a software engineer until about 3 months ago, working for the financial industry. When the rug got pulled from underneath the industry, I was standing smack in the middle of the rug!  I fell down, and have not been able to get up yet.

My interests are C# (I love LINQ!!) and to some extent, SQL.  I think I am pretty good at both.  Don’t ask me why I am unemployed if I am so smart.  I am unemployed because I perform horribly in interviews.  The only thing I can think of to describe my interviewing skills is “deer caught in the headlight”.

Well, I think this is enough for my first post. Who in the world is going to read this anyway!!

Love, Sunita