Introduction

Programming business logic under the SQL Server framework involves several different mechanisms. There are seven areas in which you can perform coding using T-SQL:

• Stored procedures

• User-defined functions

• Triggers

• Jobs

• Ad-hoc querying

• Views

• DTS

Stored procedures enable you to modularize frequently used queries and complex logic into an easy-to-manage object. User-defined functions provide similar functionality, but with the additional capability to return single values or tables to the caller, which provides a great deal of flexibility.

With SQL Server you can perform coding from various environments. The command prompt can be used with BCP and OSQL. Third-party products can code SQL and "pass through" to the server in a language understood by SQL Server. The Query Analyzer is a powerful T-SQL editing environment that is quite comfortable to use.

When using the Query Analyzer to write code, you will often find it useful to open a couple of instances, in particular when testing multiple user interaction. Within each instance any number of windows can be open to provide access to multiple portions of a project in one easy-to-handle coding application. Multiple instances and multiple windows allow you to work with different data simultaneously.