Evan Smith

Time For A Reset

Sometimes you just need a break … a reset, if you will. I took the month of May for myself and for my family. I would list all the things that normally happen in my house and which ones ceased as of May 1, but you don’t *really* care. Just think about all the hectic things in your life and imagine doing away with all except the actually necessary obligations. I even stopped blogging for the month (and I had some great posts lined up)!

What did I do with all my newly acquired free time? I filled it up, of course! This post is all about what I actually did with extra time in the day versus what I’ve said in the past I would do with extra time if I had it.

SQL Screw-ups: Cursors and While Loops

This is a continuation of the SQL Screw-ups series that stemmed from my Nashville .NET User Group talk on 03/14/2019. Slides and setup details are on the first post in the series.

The rule of thumb around cursors and while loops in SQL is simply don’t do it unless you must. Let’s look at a scenario in which you should not use a loop, and then we’ll look at a problem that is easily solved by a loop.

SQL Screw-ups: Type Mismatches

This is a continuation of the SQL Screw-ups series that stemmed from my Nashville .NET User Group talk on 03/14/2019. Slides and setup details are on the first post in the series.

SQL Server helps us out by performing implicit type conversions when it can, but how helpful is this actually? What you don’t know can hurt you when it comes to type conversion . Let’s discuss the type conversions that you may not know are happening and some tips for avoiding them.

SQL Screw-ups: Outer Join Filters

This is a continuation of the SQL Screw-ups series that stemmed from my Nashville .NET User Group talk on 03/14/2019. Slides and setup details are on the first post in the series.

Think about the last time you needed apply additional filtering to a query based on information from some other table. You probably JOINed the additional table or added an EXISTS predicate in the WHERE clause. Let’s discuss ways you might’ve screwed it up. Continue reading “SQL Screw-ups: Outer Join Filters”

SQL Screw-ups: The Wonders of NULL

This is a continuation of the SQL Screw-ups series that stemmed from my Nashville .NET User Group talk on 03/14/2019. Slides and setup details are on the first post in the series.

The definition of null is unknown according to Microsoft documentation. That is, null represents an unknown value. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to catch a common mistake I was sometimes making regarding null. Here’s the scoop.