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SQL & Microsoft SQL Server for Builders of Software ( SQL Server - Tips, Tricks, and Other Good Stuff ) Dane Schilling Year Old Headspringer Sprung: 4/1/2014

You’re in good hands... ●6 years of report writing o Cognos, Crystal, and SSRS ●3 years of MS SQL Server Administration ●3 years of.NET Development ●Passionate about SQL ●Learning from new mistakes everyday

Agenda ●Things to check ●DR/HA ●T-SQL ●Goodies

●Google with keyword tsql ●Who to trust: Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Brent Ozar..and others ●Great resource: ●It depends Oddities...

Things to check Really...please check these things

●Development and test databases should be in simple mode ●Databases should not be left in bulk-logged ●Don’t arbitrarily change recovery models o This will affect backups and behavior ●If not in simple mode you MUST take log backups Recovery Model

Two Gotchas... ●SQL Server 2012 bug (fixed in CU7) with model database ●RoundHouse bug (fixed in version 0.8.6) default to full mode

Database Maintenance Check that the following are occurring on some schedule (on all environments): ●Backups ●CHECKDB* ●Statistics Updates ●Index Maintenance ●History Cleanup

Security ●sa account should be disabled ●Best to use Windows authentication only ●Grant minimal rights* *Hard to do

Files At a minimum add at least one file; this at least separates the system data from your data. The more separation you have the more restoration options you have - it isn’t magic though.

Indexes ●Clustered = physical sort (only one allowed, avoid heaps) ●Others are non-clustered ●Double edged sword ●Foreign keys are not automatically indexed

Questions?

Disaster Recovery & High Availability These things are important to our stakeholders.

Disaster Recovery ●Backups are worthless if they can’t be restored...ask someone to restore one occasionally ●You cannot restore to a point in time in simple mode and sometimes not in bulk- logged

High Availability ●Ask stakeholders if they have any replicated DBs, mirrors or AlwaysOn systems in place...bad things can happen if you ignore their existence o High latency o Delayed log truncation (file growth) o Replication hell

AlwaysOn ●2012+ high availability option ●Super awesome o Multiple read replicas o Connection strings can be set to take advantage of read only replicas if available (ApplicationIntent) o Great for reporting

Questions?

T-SQL Microsoft’s blend of SQL

RBAR - Row By Agonizing Row When working with a database always leverage its ability to work with sets. If you find yourself trying to loop through rows then you are going about it the wrong way.

Joins ●List Tables Together o Join tables together in WHERE clause ●JOIN o Only returns matches ●INNER JOIN o Same as just JOIN ●FULL (FULL OUTER) JOIN o Returns all matches and all remaining non-matched rows ●LEFT (LEFT OUTER) JOIN o Returns all matches and all remaining rows from left source ●RIGHT (RIGHT OUTER) JOIN o Returns all matches and all remaining rows from right source ●CROSS JOIN o Returns all combinations (no on clause)

Gotcha

Temp tables, table variables and CTEs #Temp ●tempdb ●indexes ●connection ●memory ●primary key ●batch scope ; CTE ●different ●request

Working with Sets ●UNION ( ALL ) ●INTERSECT ●EXCEPT ●MERGE

Aggregates and Window Functions ●Aggregates o ROW_NUMBER() o RANK() o NTILE() o DENSE_RANK() o COUNT() o AVG() o etc…. ●Window Functions o OVER o PARTITION BY o ORDER BY o Can’t do COUNT(DISTINCT) o Don’t require GROUP BY (duplicates)

Subqueries ●Can be used in o SELECT o CASE o WINDOW FUNCTION o FROM o JOIN o WHERE o ORDER BY ●Can’t be used in o Aggregates o GROUP BY

Stored Procedures and Views ●Stored Procedures o Offer performance improvements o Accept parameters o Can’t be included with other queries o Code consistency and reusability ●Views o Don’t offer performance improvements (unless indexed) o Can be included in other queries o Code consistency and reusability

Functions ●Table and Scalar o Use with caution o Must be performant o Number of calls can be dramatic ●Table - Multi vs Single (Inline) ○Can be used with APPLY ■CROSS ■OUTER ●Scalar ○SELECT ○Clauses (ON and WHERE) ○ORDER BY ○GROUP BY

Questions?

Goodies!!! Now for some cool stuff???

CTE Trick Power of simple math!!!

4K Splitter...also from sqlservercentral.com

FOR XML PATH...I don’t remember where I saw this for the first time. I just know I love to abuse it.

Going a little crazy... You can use the XML CLR to build HTML!!!!!!!!!

Questions?