RTFM365, Week 3

Well, my brain has increased by 12.4% in terms of SQL knowledge this week, as a direct result of my BOL readings, and according to numbers I’ve just made up. I’m sure it’s accurate.

The thing that has me preoccupied this week is how much I’m looking up and reading (what one might consider) basics. I keep thinking, “Man, I’m going to have to really dig in at some point, here.” But how often have I emphasized the need to revisit basics? Further, I don’t appear to be running out of “basics” material yet…the foundations of SQL are very long and wide. 

I’m also still not bored. Sure, some days it’s a bit difficult to stop whatever I’m doing to go read BOL, but it’s not boring.

Boilerplate: 

For the next year (-17 days now), I will read from SQL Server Books Online a little every day, and blog about it weekly. See my RTFM365 post for the full details on this project, and follow along with the series via the RTFM365 tag. 

Reading this week was in SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online unless otherwise noted. Please note: I’m exploring BOL and learning a little each day; I’m not here to read it to you or review it.  

Here’s what I read last week (days 18-24):

Common Language Runtime (CLR) Integration Programming Concepts – I didn’t dig into this at all, but I wanted to get a general idea of what’s what. So I read what is essentially the table of contents.

Database Engine > Querying and Changing Data > Accessing and Changing Database Data >  

• Selecting a Database
• Using Options in SQL Server. “You should avoid changing SET options and setting them through the SET statements. Instead, we recommend that SET options be set at the connection level through the connection properties of ODBC or OLE DB.” This doesn’t specifically say so, but many SET options cause recompiles.
  Edit: For more on SET options and recompiles in SQL 2005, see
    Batch Compilation, Recompilation, and Plan Caching Issues in SQL Server 2005 (section: Query plan caching and various SET options) or
    Plan Caching in SQL Server 2008 (section: Query plan caching and various SET options).
• Elements of Transact-SQL
• Manipulating Result Sets >
  • Combining Results Sets with UNION
  • Performing Semi-Joins with EXCEPT and INTERSECT
  • Using UNION, EXCEPT and INTERSECT with Other Transact-SQL Statements “…when using UNION, EXCEPT and INTERSECT … The first query can contain an INTO clause that creates a table to hold the final result set.” Cool, never tried that.
  • Using Common Table Expressions

Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen