This site is intended for those who are beginning to use SQL Server as part of their day-to-day activities.  You will find in this site a collection of useful functions, triggers, stored procedures and tips and tricks related to SQL Server.

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A collection of useful user-defined functions that deal with dates.

• Determine the age of a person as of today given the birthdate.
• Determine if it is a leap year.
• Get the first day of the week, first day of the month or first day of the quarter
• Get the last day of the month.
• Get the number of days in a month or the number of days in a year.

A collection of useful user-defined functions that deal with strings (varchar/char/nvarchar/nchar).

• Count the number of times a given character occur in a given string.
• Count the number of times a given search string exists in a given input string.
• Count the number of words in a given input string.
• Emulate the behavior of Oracle's InitCap string function, which changes the first letter of each word in uppercase and all others in lowercase.
• Encrypt an input string using a simple encryption algorithm.
• Trim the leading zeros from a given alphanumeric value.

A collection of useful user-defined functions that deal with tree or hierarchical design structures.

• Get the path of a particular node from the parent within a hierarchy/tree-type table structure.
• Determine the level of a particular node within the hierarchy/tree-type table structure.

• Generate a table of integer values from 1 to the maximum input value.
• Generate a table containing the individual values in a comma-delimited/comma-separated value.

A collection of useful SQL Server-related tips and tricks:

• Returning a comma-delimited output without the use of cursors.
• Easily identify missing identity values.
• Generate random numbers without using the RAND function.
• Generate random records from any table.
• Sort IP addresses that are stored as VARCHAR by their numeric values.
• Different ways of splitting a full name to get the first name and last name.
• Query/read and import an Excel file without using DTS and without importing the data to a SQL table.
• Execute a batch of .sql scripts located in a specific directory without manually opening and executing them through Query Analyzer.
• Convert datetime values into different date formats.

A list of SQL Server error messages and for certain error messages, discusses ways on how to solve the error or work around them:

• SQL Server Error Message 1 to 500

A collection of frequently asked questions about SQL Server grouped by categories:

• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server Tables
• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server Data Types
• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server Dates (DateTime / SmallDateTime)
• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server Views
• Frequently Asked Questions - SELECT Statement
• Frequently Asked Questions - INSERT Statement
• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server Error Messages
• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server Equivalent of Oracle Functions

A collection of frequently asked questions about SQL Server 2005 grouped by categories:

• Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
• Frequently Asked Questions - VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX), VARBINARY(MAX)