Scriptio 0.5.5 Released

Bill Graziano has released the latest version of his Scriptio tool. What is scriptio?

From Bill's site: "After working with SQL Server 2005 I've discovered that I can't script out one object per file and include both the DROP and CREATE in the same file. Which is driving me absolutely crazy! So I wrote a little utility and thought I'd share it."

You can get the lates version here

Check For Valid SMALLDATETIME

Sometime you get data from different sources and the dates are stored in a varchar columnYou need to store that data in your database. The column has a smalldatetime data typeHow do you make sure that the data is correct? You have to use ISDATE and also check that the dates are between 1/1/1900 and 6/6/2079
Here is some code to test that out

CREATE TABLE TestDates(VarCharDate VARCHAR(30))


-- Good smalldatetime
INSERT TestDates
VALUES ('19000101')

--Bad smalldatetime, less than 19000101
INSERT TestDates
VALUES ('18990101')

--Bad smalldatetime, greater than 20790606
INSERT TestDates
VALUES ('20790607')

-- Good smalldatetime
INSERT TestDates
VALUES ('20790606')


--Bad date
INSERT TestDates
VALUES ('abababa')

--This will Fail
SELECT CASE
WHEN ISDATE(VarCharDate) =1 THEN
CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME,VarCharDate)
ELSE
NULL
END
FROM TestDates

--This will run fine
SELECT VarCharDate,
CASE
WHEN ISDATE(VarCharDate) =1
THEN CASE WHEN VarCharDate BETWEEN '19000101' AND '20790606'
THEN CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME,VarCharDate)
ELSE NULL
END
END
FROM TestDates


Flo has left a comment, he/she has suggested to convert to datetime in the second case in the case that the date is not stored in the YYYYMMDD format
Here is the suggestion

DECLARE @VarCharDate VARCHAR(100)
SET @VarCharDate = '12/30/2070'

-- Modification:
-- Use CONVERT(DATETIME, @VarCharDate) to check the varchar in any possible format
SELECT @VarCharDate,
CASE
WHEN ISDATE(@VarCharDate) =1
THEN CASE WHEN CONVERT(DATETIME,@VarCharDate) BETWEEN '19000101' AND '20790606'
THEN CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME,@VarCharDate)
ELSE NULL
END
END

COALESCE And ISNULL Differences

I decided to do a quick post about two differences between COALESCE and ISNULL

Run the following block of code


-- The result is 7, integer math
SELECT 15 / ISNULL(CONVERT(INT,NULL), 2.00)

--The result is 7.5, which is correct
SELECT 15 / COALESCE(CONVERT(INT,NULL), 2.00)

You will see that the result is not the same ISNULL does integer math while COALESCE does not

COALESCE correctly promotes its arguments to the highest data type in the expression list.
ISNULL just looks at the first datatype, which is an integer (15) and makes everything an int
COALESCE looks at 2.00 and 15 and then promotes the integer to decimal

Another example is returning the first non null value, ISNULL can only take 2 values while COALESCE can take a whole lot more
Here we have 4 variables and all except for one are null

DECLARE @Var1 VARCHAR(20)
DECLARE @Var2 VARCHAR(20)
DECLARE @Var3 VARCHAR(20)
DECLARE @Var4 VARCHAR(20)

SELECT @Var4 = 'ABC'


--This will return ABC
SELECT COALESCE(@Var1,@Var2,@Var3,@Var4)

[Edit] Roji. P. Thomas has an excellent article with even more detailed examples. The links is below.
http://toponewithties.blogspot.com/2004/08/differences-between-coalesce-and.html
[/Edit]

Retrieve Column Info Of Table Valued Functions By Using INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINE_COLUMNS

How do you retrieve the columns of Table Valued Functions?
This question was posted to day in the microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming
forum. Although I answered the question I must admit that I have never used the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINE_COLUMNS before

So let's see how it works
First create a User-Defined Functions that returns a table data type


USE pubs
GO

CREATE FUNCTION LargeOrder ( @FreightParm 
style="color:#3333ff;">money )
RETURNS @OrderShipperTab TABLE
   (
 OrderPrice       MONEY,
     OrderDate   DATETIME
    )
AS
BEGIN
   INSERT @OrderShipperTab
        SELECT OrderPrice, OrderDate
         FROM Orders
        WHERE OrderPrice > @FreightParm
   RETURN
END

--Let's test the function
-- This will return all orders with an order price greater than $40

SELECT *
FROM LargeOrder( 40 )


--Now let's get the column information

SELECT TABLE_NAME,COLUMN_NAME,DATA_TYPE,ORDINAL_POSITION
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINE_COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME ='LargeOrder'
ORDER BY ORDINAL_POSITION

Rename A column In A Table With sp_rename

How do you rename a column in a SQL Server table without using Enterprise Manager/SSMS of course, T_SQL only.
This is a frequent question in the newsgroups and it's causing some confusion for people because you would assume that

you would use the ALTER TABLE syntax, instead of that you have to use sp_rename to rename the column

--Create the table
CREATE TABLE TestRename (id INT,[Some[[Col] INT)

--Do a select to check the column name
SELECT * FROM TestRename

-- This is how you change the dataype
ALTER TABLE TestRename
ALTER COLUMN [Some[[Col] VARCHAR(50)

--this is how you rename the column
EXEC sp_rename 'TestRename.[Some[[Col]', 'SomeCol', 'COLUMN'

--Let’s check again, you will see that the column name has changed
SELECT * FROM TestRename

After changing the column name with sp_rename you will get the following warning
Caution: Changing any part of an object name could break scripts and stored procedures.
The COLUMN was renamed to 'SomeCol'.

Data Dude

Last week I told you about Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude)
Kimberly L. Tripp has a post on her blog with 17 links to websites and 5 links to blogs

Here are the Data Dude team blogs:
Gert Drapers' Blog
Cameron Skinner's Blog
Richard Waymire's Blog
Thomas Murphy's Blog
Database Professional's Team Blog

Vist Kimberly's blog for the whole post

INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA SQL Server 2005 Change

Everyone keeps saying;” Don’t use the system tables directly but use the ANSI views instead”
So instead of sysobjects use INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES. In SQL Server 2000 instead of using the sysdatabases system table I always used the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA view to query for the databases. It turns out that that view was no really ANSI compliant to begin with (since SQL server 200 didn’t have schemas of course)
If you run the following query in SQL Server 2000
SELECT CATALOG_NAME, SCHEMA_OWNER
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA

You will get a result like this

CATALOG_NAME, SCHEMA_OWNER
-------------------------
master..............dbo
tempdb..............dbo
model...............dbo
msdb................dbo
pubs................dbo
Northwind...........dbo

If you run the query in SQL Server 2005 the CATALOG_NAME
will be the same
for every row (it will be the current database name)

However if you run
SELECT SCHEMA _NAME, SCHEMA_OWNER
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA

You will get the following result set

SCHEMA _NAME, SCHEMA_OWNER
--------------------------------------
dbo.................dbo
guest...............guest
INFORMATION_SCHEMA..INFORMATION_SCHEMA
sys.................sys
HumanResources......dbo
Person..............dbo
Production..........dbo
Purchasing..........dbo
Sales...............dbo
SalesData...........dbo
db_owner............db_owner
db_accessadmin......db_accessadmin
db_securityadmin....db_securityadmin
db_ddladmin.........db_ddladmin
db_backupoperator...db_backupoperator
db_datareader.......db_datareader
db_datawriter.......db_datawriter
db_denydatareader...db_denydatareader
db_denydatawriter...db_denydatawriter

What can you do to query the database name?
Well you can do this

SELECT name FROM master.sys.databases ORDER BY name

Or

SELECT name FROM master..sysdatabases ORDER BY name

According to books on line:
In earlier versions of SQL Server, the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA view returned all databases in an instance of SQL Server. In SQL Server 2005, the view returns all schemas in a database. This behavior complies with the SQL Standard. For more information, see SCHEMATA (Transact-SQL).

Use DATEADD And DATEDIFF To Get The Start And End Date For A Quarter

In the microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming forum a person asked how to get the first day of the current quarter. My answer was this: SELECT DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, GETDATE())+0, 0)
So I decided to expand on that here

--Start date of the current quarter
SELECT DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, GETDATE())+0, 0)

--start and end dates of the current quarter
SELECT DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, GETDATE())+0, 0) AS FirstDayOfQuarter,
DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, GETDATE())+1, -1) AS LastDayOfQuarter


--start day of the quarter for 20060501
SELECT DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, '20060501')+0, 0)

--start and end dates of the quarter for 20060501
SELECT DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, '20060501')+0, 0) AS FirstDayOfQuarter,
DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, '20060501')+1, -1) AS LastDayOfQuarter


--start and end dates of the quarter for 20060201
SELECT DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, '20060201')+0, 0) AS FirstDayOfQuarter,
DATEADD(qq, DATEDIFF(qq, 0, '20060201')+1, -1) AS LastDayOfQuarter

Top 5 Posts For May 2006

Below are the top 5 posts according to Google Analytics for the month of May

Login failed for user 'sa'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. SQL 2005
OPENROWSET And Excel Problems
Fun With SQL Server Update Triggers
SQL Query Optimizations
Split a comma delimited string fast!

Top SQL Server Google Searches For May 2006

These are the top SQL Searches on this site for the month of May. I have left out searches that have nothing to do with SQL Server or programming. Here are the results...

microsoft access
charindex city state zip
point into polygon
enterprise manager
cast example - sql
alter identity increment
Syntax Error Converting The Varchar Value To A Column Of Data Type Int hibernate
server updates varchar column to null
lock select
distinct
exists
password case sensitive site:sqlservercode.blogspot.com
insert
dynamic scroll

Unit Testing For The DB, Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Is Here

Microsoft Corp. today announced Visual Studio® Team Edition for Database Professionals, expanding Visual Studio 2005 Team System to include tools that enable software development organizations to collaborate more effectively when creating reliable, data-driven applications. The new product will be available as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) at Tech•Ed 2006 in Boston and is expected to ship by the end of 2006. This addition to Microsoft® Visual Studio 2005 Team System is the next milestone en route to the release of Visual Studio code-named “Orcas,” which will provide capabilities for building compelling applications that target Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005, Windows Vista™, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the next generation of Web technologies

Bringing Database Professionals Into the Application Life Cycle

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals delivers on Microsoft’s commitment to provide tools that reduce communication barriers and complexity across software development teams.

“All too frequently, schisms exist between database teams and development staff, leading to ineffective collaboration, inadequate project and code management, poor quality, and cost increases,” said Melinda Ballou, program director at IDC’s Application Life Cycle Management service. “Avoidable problems occur due to these gaps in communication. Users on both sides need tools and processes to facilitate coordination and management across groups and across skill sets, to increase efficiency, and to improve software quality earlier in the life cycle.”

This new member of the Team System family fulfills increasing demand in the market for more advanced tools for managing database changes by providing a foundation to reduce risk, ensure quality and speed deployment. Database architects, developers, administrators and other database professionals can now employ integrated change-management functionality to streamline changes to their databases and reduce the risk of catastrophic failure related to the alteration of database schemas. In addition, database professionals may now drive better quality earlier in the development process through integrated database testing, including support for database unit tests, complex test authoring and automatic generation of meaningful test data.

read the press-release: Microsoft Enhances Collaboration for Database Professionals With New Addition to Visual Studio Product Line

Import Dates, Skip Bad Data By Using ISDATE() And CASE

You have a table with a 'date' column and it's stored as varchar, the problem is that you also have bad data in there
You want to import this data into another table, but if the data can not be converted into a date you want to make it NULL
The way to handle this is by using the ISDATE() function together with CASE


--Let's create our table with bad and good data
CREATE TABLE SomeFakeDateTable (FakeDate VARCHAR(23))
INSERT SomeFakeDateTable VALUES ('ababababa')
INSERT SomeFakeDateTable VALUES ('20060101')
INSERT SomeFakeDateTable VALUES ('20060299')
INSERT SomeFakeDateTable VALUES (NULL)
INSERT SomeFakeDateTable VALUES ('20060401')
INSERT SomeFakeDateTable VALUES ('20050331')


--Here is the query
SELECT FakeDate,
CASE
WHEN ISDATE(FakeDate) = 1 THEN CONVERT(DATETIME,FakeDate)
ELSE NULL
END TheRealDate
FROM SomeFakeDateTable

red-gate SQL Prompt: Intellisense for SQL Server

SQL Prompt™
Intellisense for SQL Server, plus other features
There was a question on the SQL Server programming forum about intellisense and SQL server. it turns out that red-gate has such a product and better yet it's free until September 2006. So test it out (I will) and maybe it will be usefull for your development.

What does SQL Prompt offer (this info is from their site)?

Code completion for fast, accurate script building
Discoverability in SQL Server query creation
Keyword formatting, code snippet integration other extended features
FREE until 1st September 2006
No time-bombs, no restrictions


SQL Prompt provides Intellisense® style auto-completion for Microsoft SQL Server editors. It will tell you the exact formatting you should use for your SQL commands, while you are writing them and will therefore help you write fast, perfectly formatted SQL statements. SQL Prompt improves the productivity of all SQL script creation. SQL Prompt can be downloaded free until 1st September 2006 and we are providing forum support on the SQL Prompt support forum. A web help file is also available.

SQL Prompt simply sits behind the scenes and provides unobtrusive help when you press Ctrl-Space or when you type "." after a table/view/alias name.

Features include :

Table/View name completion
Column name completion
Stored procedure name completion
USE completion
JOIN/JOIN ON completion
Auto-uppercasing of keywords
Auto-popup after keywords
SQL Prompt works with Microsoft Query Analyzer, SQL Server 2005 Management Studio, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET 2003, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager, UltraEdit32


Download it here

Chaos Isolation Level In SQL Server

The other day I posted SQL Server Teaser: Isolation Level
So either no one reads this blog or no one knew he answer, or maybe you are too shy to make a comment
Anyway the answer is Chaos and you can find it in DTS, when you right click in the DTS designer then select Package Properties and after that click on the Advanced tab.
you can select it from the Transaction Isolation dropdown (see pic)

Populating A Dropdown With Weekly Dates

Let's assume you have a website and the user can pick from a date range, You want to be a nice guy/girl (* reason for the asterisk is at the end) so instead of having a dropdown that looks like

Week1
Week2
Week3

You want it to have start and end dates for the week
The start date should be a Sunday and the end date should be a Saturday
The output should be something like this

2006-05-07 - 2006-05-13
2006-05-14 - 2006-05-20
2006-05-21 - 2006-05-27

What do you do? Do you store all these dates in a table, you can but you will have to maintain this.
Another way is to use a number table
You would create the number table only once. Then you can use DATEADD and DATEPART with the number table to return the desired results


-- Create out Pivot table ** do this only once-- populate it with 1000 rows
CREATE TABLE NumberPivot (NumberID INT PRIMARY KEY)

DECLARE @intLoopCounter INT
SELECT @intLoopCounter =0

WHILE @intLoopCounter <=1000 BEGIN
INSERT INTO NumberPivot
VALUES (@intLoopCounter)

SELECT @intLoopCounter = @intLoopCounter +1
END
GO

--And here is the query

--I started with a Sunday
DECLARE @StartDate DATETIME
SELECT @StartDate ='05/07/2006'

--How many rows to return
DECLARE @RowsToReturn INT
SELECT @RowsToReturn = 50

SELECT DATEADD(wk,numberID,@StartDate) AS WeekStart,
DATEADD(dd,-1,(DATEADD(wk,numberID+1,@StartDate))) AS WeekEnd
FROM dbo.NumberPivot
WHERE NumberID <= @RowsToReturn -1 -- 1 since the number table starts from 0
AND DATEADD(wk,numberID,@StartDate) >=@StartDate
ORDER BY 1


* At my previous job we were doing file exchanges with some state agencies. One of the fields in the file was Sex and the values could be either F or M,. fair enough right? Well guess what, there was one person who worked there and had a sex-operation done and did not want to be classified as male or female So we then added other ( O ) We had no choice this was specifically written for the state and they were the major user of the program…oh well, nothing is black or white is it?

Spatial Indexes In SQL Server 2005

Maybe you work with Oracle as well as SQL server 2005 and you use Oracle Spatial and Oracle Locator. Well there is a way to implement this in SQL Server 2005.
Read the article "Using Table Valued Functions in SQL Server 2005 to Implement a Spatial Data Library" on MSDN.

This article explains how to add spatial search functions (point-near-point and point in polygon) to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 using C# and table-valued functions. It is possible to use this library to add spatial search to your application without writing any special code. The library implements the public-domain C# Hierarchical Triangular Mesh (HTM) algorithms from Johns Hopkins University. That C# library is connected to SQL Server 2005 using a set of scalar-valued and table-valued functions. These functions act as a spatial index.

SQL Server Pics From Version 1.0 On

Euan Garden has posted pictures of the SQL server product boxes since version 1.0
Did you know version 1.0 came out on Floppy's for OS/2?
Check out the pictures here
http://blogs.msdn.com/euanga/archive/2006/05/23/597677.aspx

SQL Server Teaser: Isolation Level

In SQL server 2000 there are 4 isolation levels

Read uncommitted which can produce a dirty read, a repeatable read and a phantom read
Read committed which can produce a repeatable read and a phantom read
Repeatable read which can produce a phantom read
Serializable

What if I tell you that there is a 5th one, no it’s not snapshot isolation we are dealing with SQL Server 2000 here

The question is how do you set it and what is the (appropriate) name of this isolation level
I will post the answer on Memorial Day if no nobody answers by then

Cumulative Hotfix Package (build 2153) For SQL Server 2005 Available

So just after sp1 we already have a hotfix
The following has been fixed

SQL Server 2005 Post-SP1 hotfixes that are included in SQL Server 2005 build 9.0.2153
SQL Bug number Description
410 Dimension security does not support visual totals on a parent attribute that is in a parent-child dimension.
433 If you execute an ALTER DDL statement that removes dimension hierarchies from the database without removing the hierarchies from the cubes, an access violation may occur.
447 Processing performance on multiprocessor computers is somewhat slower than expected.
459 Under very specific and rare circumstances, a deadlock can occur between two or more sessions in SQL Server 2005. In this case, the internal deadlock monitoring mechanism does not detect the deadlock between the sessions.
461 Page breaks may not be respected when a table is rendered in Microsoft Office Excel if that report contains tables with the conditions of NoRows=true and NoRowsMessage=null, and the table contains a table header or footer.
464 The leaf page of a non-clustered index may have only one index row.
491 On a SQL Server 2005 installation that uses Turkish collation, you cannot view job steps that are of SSIS type from SQL Server Management Studio. If a job has SSIS job steps only, you receive an "Index was outside the bounds of the array. (SqlManagerUI)" error message when you click the Steps tab.
499 A Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) query that involves non-trivial custom rollups when it runs complex sum-like aggregate expressions runs much slower on SQL Server 2005 than on SQL Server 2000.
531 When you run a query or a stored procedure in SQL Server 2005, certain conditions can cause the SQL Server optimizer not to be able to produce an execution plan.
541 An ADOMD.NET application that runs through an IXMLA provider is limited to 32 maximum user sessions.
554 When you query the IS_PLACEHOLDERMEMBER member property for a dimension member by using the .Properties("IS_PLACEHOLDERMEMBER") function in MDX, the value that is returned is always FALSE. This behavior occurs even for members that are placeholders in the dimension.
584 When a report contains an image that is external or is a resource in Reporting Services and the report uses the interactive sorting functionality, the image is replaced by a red x.
606 The MDSCHEMA_PROPERTIES row set returns the wrong data type for some user-defined properties.
608 If you include a subreport in a group footer and you enable the HideDuplicates property in a detail row on a grouping item, SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services raises an internal error when you try to export the report. The error also occurs when you click Print Preview on the Preview tab in Report Designer.
614 SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services may intermittently display a System.NullReferenceException exception in the ReportSnapshot.EnsureAllStreamsAreClosed procedure. This behavior generates a mini-dump.
615 The SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services service does not start when you use Japanese_Unicode_CI_AS as a collation for the instance of SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.
617 When you try to run a linked report that uses the User!UserID variable and the execution properties are set to use Snapshots, you receive the following error message:
3wp!library!1!1/27/2006-13:10:27:: e ERROR: Throwing Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.InternalCatalogException:
627 In the Japanese version of SQL Server 2005, the fulltext schedule creation in SQL Server Management Studio fails, and you receive the following error message:
Specified @category_name ('フルテキスト'localized string) not found (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 14262)
636 A memory leak may occur in the common language runtime (CLR) if you pass a CLR user-defined data type as a parameter by using a stored procedure or the sp_executesql procedure.
652 If Y-axis margins are enabled and the minimum Y-value of all data points is a "nice" integer value, the Y-axis minimum value will be adjusted to a lower value. For example, the chart control rounds 4.0 to 4 to create a "nice" integer value. However, the generated Y-axis labels are incorrect.
664 You run SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services builds 9.00.1520 through 9.00.1539 or SQL Server 2005 SP1. In this case, an MDX query that includes a distinct count measure may not return results. This behavior only occurs if the measure group that is queried contains multiple partitions.
708 The SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) service does not start when you install SQL Server 2005 SP1
752 The MSMQTask.dll and dependencies are deleted when the fix that is described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 910070 is applied.
40000100 If the log reader agent and the DBCC DBREINDEX or ALTER INDEX ...REBUILD commands run at the same time, the log reader agent may miss some transactions to the distributor.
40000102 When you configure Log Shipping and add two or more secondary servers to Log Shipping, only the secondary server that you added last is monitored by the monitor server and the other secondary servers are not.
40000108 The SQL Server 2005 Database Engine Tuning Advisor may unexpectedly exit if indexed views are part of the workload that is tuned.
40000110 The YTD calculation in cubes that use parent-child dimensions may be incorrect.
50000104 The SqlCommandBuilder.DeriveParameters(SqlCommand) method returns an exception when you execute a stored procedure with an input parameter that is a typed XML type.
50000112 A member of the SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services database administrator role cannot add or delete perspectives. Only a member of the SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services server role can perform such tasks.
50000115 A Report Server Model may use an Analysis Services data source. MDX queries are generated from Report Builder based on the Report Server Model. Dates in the MDX queries have the month and day parts transposed.
50000116 A FETCH operation that uses a KEYSET cursor may be slow if the target table for the cursor has a clustered index and non-clustered indexes. This behavior occurs if the clustered index is the best choice for the FETCH operation and if the SELECT query for the cursor is very simple.
50000120 In SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, calculated members that are defined in the cube MDX script are resolved before any session or query defined calculations. The only exceptions are certain scenarios with the Aggregate and VisualTotals functions. This behavior is a change from the SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services behavior. In SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, the Solve Order could be used explicitly to insert a session or a query-defined calculation between two cube level calculations. This change in behavior may cause the query or session scope calculated members not to return the results that you want in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. Cumulative hotfix package for SQL Server 2005 (build 9.0.2153) introduces new syntax that allows for control over the scope in which a calculated member is evaluated.
50000151 When you run a SELECT query to return any duplicate rows in a table, incorrect results are returned if the query plan contains a hash aggregation and if one or more of the columns in the table contain a combination of empty strings and undefined characters.
50000154 You may receive a variablelock list error message when you run multiple instances of a package.

You can download the hotfix here

Customers who bought this item also bought...

Customers who bought this item also bought....by now you probably know that I am talking about Amazon.com
So let's try to implement our own (simple) Amazon system
We will call it People who bought this song also bought these songs
So basically we will create 3 tables (ArtistTable, Songtable and SongPaid)
These are very basic tables and they are missing a lot of info, I created them so that the query is nice and simple
So if person A buys song 3 then we want to return all the songs (except song 3) from customers who also bought song 3 (except customer A)
we we also list how many times a song was bought, so that we can see what the most popular songs were that people bought who also bought the same song that we bought
Let's create our tables first

CREATE TABLE ArtistTable (ID INT PRIMARY KEY, ArtistName VARCHAR(500))
INSERT INTO ArtistTable VALUES(1,'Red Hot Chilli Peppers')
INSERT INTO ArtistTable VALUES(2,'Pearl Jam')
INSERT INTO ArtistTable VALUES(3,'Astral Projection')
INSERT INTO ArtistTable VALUES(4,'Chemical Brothers')

CREATE TABLE Songtable (ID INT PRIMARY KEY , SongName VARCHAR(500),ArtistID INT)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(1,'Under The Bridge',1)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(2,'Black',2)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(3,'Mahadeva',3)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(4,'Block Rockin Beats',4)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(5,'Setting Sun',4)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(6,'Alive',1)
INSERT INTO Songtable VALUES(7,'Give It Away Now',2)

CREATE TABLE SongPaid (SongID INT, CustID INT)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(1, 1)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(2, 1)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(1, 2)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(3, 3) -- Current Buyer (3)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(3, 4) -- Another Buyer (4)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(4, 4) -- Also bought by 4 ('Block Rockin Beats')
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(5, 4) -- Also bought by 4 ('Setting Sun')
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(4, 5)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(4, 6)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(5, 6)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(3, 7) -- Another Buyer (4)
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(7, 7) -- Also bought by 7 ('Give It Away Now')
INSERT INTO SongPaid VALUES(4, 7) -- Also bought by 7 ('Block Rockin Beats')

CREATE INDEX ix_SongPaid ON SongPaid(SongID,CustID)

/*Now let's do the query with person 3 and song 3
our result set will be

SongID,SongName,ArtisName,SongCount
4,Block Rockin Beats,Chemical Brothers,2
5,Setting Sun Chemical Brothers,1
7,Give It Away Now,Pearl Jam,1

*/

DECLARE @SongId INT, @CustId INT
SELECT @SongId = 3,@CustId =3


SELECT s1.SongID ,st.Songname,a.ArtistName, Count(*) AS SongCount
FROM SongPaid s1
JOIN Songtable st on s1.SongID = st.ID
JOIN ArtistTable a on st.ArtistID = a.ID
WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT custid FROM SongPaid
WHERE SongID =@SongId AND CustID =s1.CustID )
AND SongID <> @SongId --Don't return the song we bought
AND CustID <> @CustId --Skip other songs we bought by skipping our customerid
GROUP BY s1.SongID ,st.Songname,a.ArtistName


The songs and bands I used in the tables are real so in case you don't know them here is some additional info with an Amazon link to the CD
'Under The Bridge' and 'Give It Away Now' are from the CD Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers
'Black' and 'Alive' are from the CD Ten by Pearl Jam
'Mahadeva' is from the CD In The Mix by Astral Projection
'Setting Sun' and 'Block Rockin Beats'is from the CD Singles 93-03 by the Chemical Brothers