Steve Novoselac posted a good article about using CROSS APPLY with TSQL. This is a really useful technique for transforming data into grouped lists. It made me think of a similar feature in MySQL, a function, called GROUP_CONCAT. Here’s a demonstration of CROSS APPLY with TSQL and GROUP_CONCAT in MySQL to achieve the same thing. [...]

MySQL fulltext indexing can be a useful addition to a website requiring some better searching capabilities. Many blogging platforms based on MySQL, like wordpress, will be using fulltext indexes for their search features. While not as powerful as something like Lucene it certainly is a lot simpler to setup. Fulltext indexes can only be created on [...]

Asking for database documentation in many tech shops will result in blank stares. Other places do see the value of but it forever remains on the to-do list. There are a few commercial products available hoping to help with this; SchemaToDoc – http://www.schematodoc.com/ SqlSpec – http://www.elsasoft.org/ SQL Doc – http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Doc/index.htm I’m not convinced of their [...]

If you ever need to call a MySQL procedure from SQL Server it’s fairly simple thanks to ODBC and Linked Servers. This will allow you to reuse any logic already invested in MySQL Stored Procedures saving you from rewriting them. Here’s a simple example on how you can do it; Create the following procedure in [...]

Several weeks ago I posted an article about Non-SELECT Joins in T-SQL and MySQL. The examples only covered INNER JOINS but sometimes we need to update, or delete, records in a table that do not have a corresponding record in another table. I’m going to illustrate the various methods for doing this in SQL Server [...]

If you ever have to do any ETL type work then at some point you’re probably going to have to work with data on a daily batch basis. Many people make use of the DATEPART function in T-SQL, or the DATE function in MySQL for this type of work. If you do something like… TSQL [...]

I read a great article, by Pinal Dave, on SQL Joins  this week. I thought I’d add something for Non-SELECT joins as I’ve noticed a few developers missing these in their armoury. It doesn’t help that there is no standard so every database implements this differently. This is one of the few occasions where you [...]

One of the killer features of SQL Server is the ability to retrieve data from almost any source. Want to query MySQL, Access databases, text files, Active Directory, Exchange mailboxes or XML documents? All this is possible with SQL Server and is relatively simple to do so and all without resorting to SSIS. Getting data [...]