Category Archives: SQL Server

Certification Exam – Second Shot Free offer is back !

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One of the popular offers I always liked while pursuing a Microsoft Certification is once again back. The second shot offer gives the candidate an opportunity to have a second shot of the same exam at no additional cost (if the candidate could not successfully pass in the first attempt).

I am planning to take the MCITP : Database Developer 2008 exam and hope to use this offer as it gives me a cushion (If I cannot successfully pass at the first instance).. So I am rushing for a coupon…, remember the coupons are available for a limited time only. The offer is valid up to June 30, 2010. for more information visit promteric web site Here or Microsoft website Here

— Bru Medishetty

Download SQL Server Sample Databases

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When working with SQL Server most of the times the example queries that are provided in articles are based on the sample databases available in SQL Server 2005 / 2008.

If you have missed installing the Sample Databases when installing SQL Server, all you need to do is download the sample databases that are available at Microsoft Codeplex Website. There are databases available for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008.

Additionally you can look at the one of my articles to Install a sample Database in SQL Server 2005

— Bru Medishetty

Concatenating Strings to NULL values

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We recently ran into this situation of reports containing nothing but blank spaces. When investigated the reason was that the String concatenation statement was written as a general statement. There is nothing wrong in the statement, it works fine when the variables have a value but does not work when one of the variables is NULL.

The “SELECT @FinalString” statement returns NULL since the variable @String1 is NULL. When such a variable is concatenated with other set of variables or string values it would all result in NULL and the string message(s) that is to be used will not return the desired output (resulting in blank spaces in reports in one of our case).

In order to overcome such issues, the ISNULL function can be used which checks the value and replaces with the value to be replaced if NULL is found. The same statement is rewritten and ISNULL is implemented to check for NULL values in @String1 variable, if @String1 is NULL, then ‘EMPTY STRING1’ is included in the final string and results in a meaningful string value instead of NULL.

Note that the appropriate statement would also include ISNULL(@String2,’EMPTY STRING2′), it has been avoided in the example to emphasize its importance at the @String1..

For more information on ISNULL look at Books Online link here

— Bru Medishetty