Structure of This Book

   

This book is divided into eight chapters. You can read through all eight chapters sequentially, or you can read only those chapters that pertain to problems you are solving at any given time.

The only exception is Chapter 1, which you should read first no matter which other chapter you read next .

  • Chapter 1, introduces the concept and use of a Pivot table. This recipe is in a chapter by itself, because we use the Pivot table pattern in many other recipes throughout the book. This is a must-read chapter.

  • Chapter 2, focuses on the core of SQL's functionality: set manipulation. In this chapter, you'll find techniques for performing the set operations you learned in elementary school, such as difference, intersection, and compliment, using SQL. You'll also find techniques for returning the top-n values from a set and for implementing various types of aggregation.

  • Chapter 3, shows you how to implement lists, stacks, queues, arrays, and matrices using Transact-SQL. Such structures are often considered the domain of other programming languages, but it's sometimes advantageous to implement them at the database level.

  • Chapter 4, shows you several useful techniques for dealing with hierarchical data from SQL. Hierarchical data presents some special challenges because SQL is optimized for relational data. Readers who have been in the industry long enough will recall that relational databases replaced hierarchical databases. Nonetheless, hierarchical data exists and we must deal with it.

  • Chapter 5, demonstrates the ins and outs of working with time-based, or temporal, data. Temporal data is frequently encountered in the business world, and failure to recognize the subtleties of querying such data is a common source of errors. In this chapter, you'll learn about granularity and about SQL Server's built-in support for temporal data. You'll then find a number of recipes that show SQL being used creatively to solve various time- and date- related problems.

  • Chapter 6, deals with the problem of logging changes and implementing audit trails. Learn how to implement an audit-trail mechanism using Transact-SQL, how to generate audit snapshots of a given point in time, and other related techniques.

  • Chapter 7, speaks to the issues involved with getting data into SQL Server from external sources. You'll find recipes for importing data into "live" systems, for validating imported data, and for dealing with master/detail data.

  • Chapter 8, is a mini-course in statistics. You'll see how to use SQL to calculate means, modes, medians, standard deviations, variances, and standard errors. You'll also learn how to implement moving averages, calculate correlations , and use confidence intervals.

Wherever possible, recipes build on data from previous recipes in the same chapter, so reading through a chapter should be fairly straightforward. If you want to experiment with just one particular recipe, check the beginning of its chapter for a description of the example data used in that chapter, or download the recipe-specific script files that create example data from this book's web page (http://oreilly.com/catalog/transqlcook ).

   


Transact-SQL Cookbook
Transact-SQL Cookbook
ISBN: 1565927567
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 152

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net