Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to the next level. Here is an article which discusses the Author’s Perspective.
Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.
SQL Quiz
As part of performance tuning exercises, our developer always suggest to use SET based operations rather than procedural languages. One of the suggestions given as a substitute for hierarchical data structure was to use CTE. What are CTEs inside SQL Server, what are their advantages and how can you rewrite a subquery using CTEs?
Link to participate in SQL Quiz
Notes of Vinod Kumar
Common Table Expressions a.k.a CTEs are an important addition to SQL Server. Though CTE is available as an alternative for Views, Subqueries, there is a special case scenario for using CTEs. Tell us, how innovatively have you used CTEs? Can there be recursive CTEs? If yes, have you ever tried them?
Notes of Pinal Dave
CTEs are often confused with Temp Table and Subqueries, but there are more facts about this subject. While working with recursive CTEs, one has to make sure that they do not go into an infinite loop and stop after certain numbers of fixed iteration. SQL Server does have an option to limit the numbers of iteration; however, there is a default number which is associated with number of loops. CTEs are also very useful in terms of readability. I’ve started to use CTEs in many places, but before I began to practice CTEs, I made sure that I’d spend a good amount of time to learn about them, and so I did.
Additional Notes
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#109-112
Common Table Expression (CTE) and Few Observation
Multiple CTE in One SELECT Statement Query
Delete Duplicate Rows
Simple Example of Recursive CTE
SQL SERVER – Simple Example of Recursive CTE – Part 2 – MAXRECURSION – Prevent CTE Infinite Loop
T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table
Prize
There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.
Link to participate in SQL Quiz
Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.
Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)
Compliance is one of the non-negotiable things in this era. SQL Server has had so many options like C2 Auditing since the SQL Server 2000 days. With the advent of Policy Based Management inside SQL Server 2005, what are the different aspects involving PBM one needs to know?
Any database design can include only the Normal forms. But while a DBA performs a product deployment, it is critical to take care of certain factors for Index creation. With this noted, explain FILLFACTOR and PATFACTOR inside SQL Server. What are their uses and when would you use each of them?
Though high availability is something critical for all large database deployments, there are other multiple options one can use. For today’s discussion, what is database mirroring option? What are the Database Mirroring enhancements done in SQL Server 2008 R2 edition? How is it different from Log shipping?
