26 | July | 2011 | SQL with Manoj

DB Basics – Is SELECT a DML (Data Manipulation Language)?

July 26, 2011 1 comment

DML or Data Manipulation Langauge as the term suggest represents those SQL statements that manipulates the data in a database. Thus these langauges allows users to INSERT, UPDATE & DELETE the data in a particular database. Other than this the much debatable SELECT statement may or may not be considered as DML upon its usage.

A simple SELECT statement which fetches data from a table is a read-only language and cannot be called as DML.

But a modified version of SELECT i.e. ‘SELECT INTO’ can fall into the DML segment. The ‘SELECT INTO’ can be used to create a Table and insert records fetched from the SELECT statement.

Also, we can manipulate the data for reporting purpose while retriving by using the SELECT statement. The data in underlying tables is unchanged but on the frontend you get a view of modified data, like:

USE [AdventureWorks]
GO

SELECT ContactID, Title,
	FirstName, MiddleName, LastName,
	FirstName + ' ' + ISNULL(MiddleName,'') + ' ' + LastName as [FullName] -- Name manipulated by joining 3 part names.
FROM Person.Contact

SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID,
	OrderQty, UnitPrice,
	OrderQty * UnitPrice as [TotalPrice] -- Manipulated cost by calculating it for total items purchased.
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail

Thus SELECT also comes under DML and following is the list of all DMLs:
1. SELECT {COLUMN LIST} [INTO {TABLE_NAME}] [WHERE {WHERE condition}]
2. INSERT INTO {TABLE_NAME} VALUES (SET of Values)
3. UPDATE {TABLE_NAME} SET [WHERE {WHERE condition}]
4. DELETE FROM {TABLE_NAME} [WHERE {WHERE condition}]

Categories: DB Concepts Tags: Data Manipulation Langauge, DML, SELECT, SELECT INTO

SQL Server 2012 (DENALI) TSQL – New Feature | SEQUENCES

July 26, 2011 2 comments

As per MS BOL a Sequence is a user-defined schema-bound object that generates a sequence of numeric values according to the specification with which the sequence was created. The sequence of numeric values is generated in an ascending or descending order at a defined interval and may cycle (repeat) as requested.

--// Create a simple Sequence
CREATE SEQUENCE CountBy1
	START WITH 1
	INCREMENT BY 1 ;
GO

-- Assign new ID sorted by First Name:
SELECT BusinessEntityID, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName,
	NEXT VALUE FOR CountBy1 OVER(ORDER BY FirstName) as New_ID
FROM Person.Person;
GO
-- If you run the above query again, it won't start from 1 but starts after the max value it ended in its first run.

--// Create a Cyclic Sequence
CREATE SEQUENCE CountBy5 AS tinyint
	START WITH 1
	INCREMENT BY 1
	MINVALUE 1
	MAXVALUE 5
	CYCLE ;
GO

-- Assign Persons to 5 different sections:
SELECT BusinessEntityID, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName,
	NEXT VALUE FOR CountBy5 OVER(ORDER BY FirstName, LastName) as New_Section
FROM Person.Person;
GO

--// Final cleanup
DROP SEQUENCE CountBy1
DROP SEQUENCE CountBy5
GO

More on MSDN: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff878058%28SQL.110%29.aspx