1 Aug 2023 Ignacio L. Bisso What Is a CTE in T-SQL? An In-Depth Beginner’s Guide with 7 Examples A common table expression (CTE) is a powerful T-SQL feature that simplifies query creation in SQL Server. CTEs work as virtual tables (with records and columns) that are created on the fly during the execution of a query. They are consumed by the query and destroyed after the query executes. In some cases – like when the query expects data in a specific format and the source tables have the data in another format – a CTE can act as a bridge to transform the data in the source tables to the format expected by the query. Read more 27 Jun 2023 Jill Thornhill How to Learn T-SQL Querying T-SQL is the dialect of SQL used by Microsoft SQL Server databases. Find out the best way to learn T-SQL querying with interactive online courses. In today's data-driven world, increasing your database knowledge is always a good choice. Microsoft SQL Server is one of the most popular databases nowadays. Knowing T-SQL – the query language of SQL Server databases –is often recommended as a worthwhile skill for careers in IT, business, or research fields. Read more 27 Oct 2021 Kateryna Koidan SQL Date and Time Functions in 5 Popular SQL Dialects Are you confused by all the date and time functions used across different SQL dialects? In this article, I summarize the date and time data types used in PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite, MySQL, and T-SQL. I also provide examples with the key SQL date and time functions used across these dialects. It’s time to become date and time gurus! Do you want to calculate how often employees are running late for work? Read more 19 Mar 2019 Dorota Wdzięczna 14 Differences Between Standard SQL and Transact-SQL In my last article, I roughly described how standard SQL differs from T-SQL and who should learn which. Now I'd like to focus on the syntax differences and illustrate these differences with examples. If you think T-SQL is an extension implementing all the features from standard SQL, you aren't right. However, in SQL Server you will find almost all the features of the SQL standard. In this article you will find examples of some of the differences in syntax between standard SQL and Transact-SQL. Read more 19 Feb 2019 Dorota Wdzięczna What's the Difference Between SQL and T-SQL? If you are beginning to learn SQL and are confused by the differences between standard SQL and other similar languages like T-SQL, this article will help make things clear. You’ll not only learn about the difference between SQL and T-SQL but also find explanations concerning which topics would be better to start learning first: standard SQL or something more specific like MS SQL Server. What is Standard SQL? SQL (Structured Query Language) is a basic ANSI/ISO standard programming language designed to operate on data stored in relational databases. Read more 1 Jan 0001 How to Group by Year in T-SQL Problem: You want to group your data by year. Example I: One of the columns in your data is transaction_date. It contains a date. You would like to group all your data by year and calculate the total money earned each year. The data table looks like this: transaction_datemoney 2018-03-251700 2019-09-12100 2018-07-141200 2018-01-05400 2019-06-082000 2020-03-061500 Solution 1 (displaying the year and the money earned): SELECT YEAR(transaction_date) AS year, SUM(money) AS money_earned FROM data GROUP BY YEAR(transaction_date); The result is: Read more 1 Jan 0001 How to Group by Two Columns in SQL Problem: You want to group your data by two columns so you can count some statistics. Example: In the order table, you have the columns order_date, product_id, customer_id, and number. You would like to count the number of products bought by each customer each day. The order table looks like this: order_dateproduct_idcustomer_idnumber 2020-11-25711 2020-11-251213 2020-11-265312 2020-11-26124 2020-11-26321 2020-11-261627 2020-11-26332 2020-11-27631 Solution: SELECT order_date, customer_id, SUM(number) AS products_number FROM order The result is: Read more 1 Jan 0001 How to Calculate the Difference Between Two Datetimes in T-SQL Problem: You have two columns of the type datetime and you want to calculate the difference between them. Example: In the travel table, there are three columns: id, departure, and arrival. You'd like to calculate the difference between the arrival and the departure. The travel table looks like this: iddeparturearrival 12018-03-25 12:00:002018-04-05 07:30:00 22019-09-12 15:50:002019-10-23 10:30:30 32018-07-14 16:15:002018-07-14 20:40:30 42018-01-05 08:35:002019-01-08 14:00:00 Solution 1 (difference in seconds): SELECT id, departure, arrival, DATEDIFF(second, departure, arrival) AS difference FROM travel; The result is: Read more 1 Jan 0001 How to Calculate the Difference Between Two Dates in T-SQL Problem: You have two columns of the date type and you want to calculate the difference between them. Example: In the travel table, there are three columns: id, departure, and arrival. You'd like to calculate the difference between arrival and departure, or the number of days from arrival to departure inclusively. The travel table looks like this: iddeparturearrival 12018-03-252018-04-05 22019-09-122019-09-23 32018-07-142018-07-14 42018-01-052018-01-08 Solution: SELECT id, departure, arrival, DATEDIFF(day, departure, arrival) AS date_difference, DATEDIFF(day, departure, arrival) + 1 AS days_inclusive FROM travel; The result is: Read more