When reviewing application code, I often see INSERT queries that don't specify a column list. INSERT INTO Table1 VALUES ('Val1', 'Val2', 'Val3'); This syntax works great. However, it has an implied dependency

I often see queries that use short names for table aliases. The queries look something like this. SELECT a.Column2 FROM Table1 AS a INNER JOIN Table2 AS b ON a.Column1 = b.Column1 Table aliases are great.

I was looking at a stored procedure the other day, trying to troubleshoot an issue. The stored procedure was well structured, short and relatively simple. The problem was, I didn't know what it was trying

When writing queries, we often require an intermediate table to store results which will be used later in the query. One of the more common ways to achieve this is with a temporary table. SELECT Column1

The SQL 'LIKE' operator is powerful. It allows us to do wildcard searches on column values. We love to use it, but sometimes we misuse it. I often see developers use the LIKE operator to do a substring

While troubleshooting an application, I stumbled across this SQL query issued by the app. SELECT * FROM ServerLogs Most developers that interact with SQL have been taught to not use "SELECT *".

This is the first in a series of articles describing how to program in C#. We'll start from the very beginning and provide the building blocks for you to create more elaborate applications. To start out,