by Sheila Zhang
Databases designed for businesses typically focus on data manipulation. Normalized relational databases tend to increase the amount of tables, to reduce the space required for data storage, while being updated to reduce redundancy. For example: a customer table holds the customer ID and address information for each customer, and the sales order table only keeps the customer ID, not...

by Sheila Zhang
This blog is a continuation from my previous blog: How to Query Using Microsoft SQL Server to Create XML, found here. 

Another great query using Microsoft SQL Server to create XML is using this process:

You can manually define your selected SML format by using the PATH option of the FOR XML clause.  In the PATH mode, the standard XML XPath, which describes the path...

by Sheila Zhang
Using Microsoft’s SQL Server 2012 makes querying with XML a lot easier.  Microsoft’s SQL Server allows you to create XML with a SQL query or shred XML into a data table format.  I have shared with you below examples of achieving this query process faster.

When you use the "FOR XML" clause in the "SELECT- T_SQL" statement, you convert a query record set to XML...

by Sheila Zhang
I query databases almost every day. The database I work with most often is the SQL server. Microsoft recommends, as a best practice, writing standard queries. While I agree that writing standards makes code more portable, due to the ease of beginning work with new platforms, I also want to share some examples below in the Microsoft training kit that allow you to dec...

by Sheila Zhang
I recently reviewed SQL character functions in SQL 2012. One thing I learned is that these functions also work in SQL 2008.
Commonly, I need to combine several string type fields into one in your select statement. So, I may write something like this:
“SELECT empid, country, region, city, country + COALESCE( N',' + region, N'') + N',' + city AS location FROM HR.Employees&...

by Sheila Zhang

If you need to monitor a system that has performance problems, start using Extended Events. It is a very lightweight performance monitoring system.

SQL Trace is an internal method for capturing events. You can set it up either manually or through SQL Server Profiler. Currently, it is supported by SQL 2012 and next version. After the next version, it might be discontinued.

SQL Se...

by Sheila Zhang
Have you ever tried to write a T-SQL statement, for example, to get a list of customers whose open amounts that are more than a specified amount? It would be good if you could write the statement like this:


The answer is no, you cannot do it. You will get an error message:
...