The BCP command line utility is the Cadillac of ETL programs for text based data files. It is REALLY FAST. It can perform data imports, data exports and generate format files. What it lacks in the transformation step can be crafted with custom TSQL. Today, I am going to concentrate on how BCP can be used to export data to text files. The format of the output text files can be either character, native, or unicode. A quick demonstration of how to create character and xml format files will also…
Full Text Search – Part 3
Tonight, I want to revisit the [WILD LIFE] database that we were using last time. The main goal is to correctly search the [ANIMALS] table returning all [NAME]’s that contain the word fly. We want the query plan associated with our query to use a index to speed up overall execution time. The first solution to this business problem resulted in FULL TABLE SCANS or CLUSTERED INDEX SCANS. Please see the desciptions of graphical icons that can show up in a query plan. Since every record in the table has…
Full-Text Search – Part 2
I want to revisit the [WILD LIFE] database that we were using last time. First goal is to create a full text index (FTI) using the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) graphical user interface (GUI). Second goal is to have our SELECT query perform a INDEX SEEK using the FTI. We have the existing [ANIMALS] table with a identity column called [ID] and a data column called [NAME] which is loaded with 445 animals names that I grabbed from WIKIPEDIA. The idea is to search for animals that have ‘fly’…
Import & Export Data – Part 3
The BCP command line utility is the Cadillac of ETL programs for text based data files. It is REALLY FAST. It can perform both imports and exports and it can generate format files from existing objects. Today, I am going implement the same business algorithms I did earlier (Part 2) using the BCP program instead of BULK INSERT. We will be working again with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) hypothetical database. I will be using the xp_cmdshell to execute BCP from a query window inside of SQL Server Management…
Database & Object Ownership
The most ANNOYING thing is to come across a database that is still owned by the user that created it. In prior server versions, this was a big deal since users owned objects and ownership had to be changed before the user could be removed from the system. Therefore, if user named ford created a table named brands, the fully qualified table name would be ford.brands. In SQL Server 2005 and greater, this has changed with a default schema of dbo. All objects created in this schema are owned by…
Searching Stored SQL – Part 4
There are four main database objects that contain stored SQL: VIEWS, TRIGGERS, FUNCTIONS and STORED PROCEDURES. Earlier today, I created a pattern searching tool for FUNCTIONS. I am going to clone and modify the code so that it will work with VIEWS. Again, I want to examine the dynamic SELECT statement that retrieves the user defined stored procedure names from a given database. This is the key element of the whole program. I took the liberty to modify the original code so that it will work standalone. The current code…
Searching Stored SQL – Part 3
There are four main database objects that contain stored SQL: VIEWS, TRIGGERS, FUNCTIONS and STORED PROCEDURES. Yesterday, I created a pattern searching tool for TRIGGERS. Today, I am going to clone and modify the code so that it will work with FUNCTIONS. Again, I want to examine the dynamic SELECT statement that retrieves the user defined stored procedure names from a given database. This is the key element of the whole program. I took the liberty to modify the original code so that it will work standalone. The current code…
Searching Stored SQL – Part 2
There are four main database objects that contain stored (compiled) SQL: VIEWS, TRIGGERS, FUNCTIONS and STORED PROCEDURES. Yesterday, I created a pattern searching tool for SQL code in STORED PROCEDURES. Today, I am going to clone and modify the code so that it will allow pattern searching on TRIGGERS. First, I want to examine the dynamic SELECT statement that retrieves the user defined stored procedure names from a given database. This is the key element of the whole program. I took the liberty to modify the original code so that…
Searching Stored SQL – Part 1
Today, I am going to start building on some the articles I did in the past. We are going to create tools to pattern search stored SQL statements. Four main objects that contain stored SQL are VIEWS, TRIGGERS, FUNCTIONS and STORED PROCEDURES. Recently at work, I was asked to find all SQL code that had a certain business rule. The task is to return all objects that reference to a certain temperature process named T1. One solution to this problem is to buy a tool like SQL Search from Red…
Full-Text Search – Part 1
Today, I want to go over why text searching for patterns is an expensive query operation. I am going to create a [WILD LIFE] database that contains a table called [ANIMALS]. A identity column called [ID] will be populated by the system automatically and a [NAME] column will be loaded with 445 animals names that I grabbed from WIKIPEDIA. The idea is to search for animals that have a root word in common. The snippet below creates the database and table. The full SQL script including insert statements is at…