A Splitting Strings puzzle: take a column holding delimited values, split them and return how many values each row has. How would you solve it?
SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Inside Working of Datatype smalldatetime
A developer got odd results when casting strings sent from an app. This puzzle looks at how the smalldatetime datatype works inside SQL Server.
SQL SERVER – Puzzle – DISTINCT Values in NVARCHAR
Why does SELECT DISTINCT treat ‘ß’ and ‘SS’ differently under each collation? A short puzzle on DISTINCT values in NVARCHAR, born from an SSIS unique key error.
SQL SERVER – Process ID X was killed by hostname ABC, host process ID Y
Seen the ERRORLOG message that a process ID was killed by hostname, with a host process ID? I explain each placeholder in error 18100 and what it tells you.
SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Working with functions to Concatenate columns
A code review puzzle: 15 fields joined with ISNULL on every column. Can you concatenate columns with NULL values in a simpler way using SQL Server functions?
SQL SERVER – Puzzle with Year Function
After my MONTH() contest, here is a puzzle with YEAR function: what do MONTH and YEAR return for the date 0001-1-1, and why? Take a guess first.
SQL SERVER – Trivia – Days in a Year
A friend was asked in an interview how to find the days in a year efficiently. Here are the T-SQL methods I tried, plus a small quiz for you.