CREATE OR ALTER | SQL with Manoj

Now “CREATE OR ALTER” Stored Procedure, Function, View, Trigger with SQL Server 2016

November 19, 2016 2 comments

SQL Server 2016 release was packed with lot of new features, and I tried to cover most of them, [check here]. This includes some of the major new features like, Polybase, Temporal Tables, JSON support, Stretch DB, Row Level Security, Dynamic data Masking, etc. are very unique to the other Database systems in competition.

But Microsoft’s SQL Server team also keeps on adding few features in every release which were already there in other Database systems, so that developers could use those and make their life easier, like the new IF EXISTS option with DROP & ALTER statements I already discussed in my [previous post].

Now, with the recent Service Pack 1, one more feature has been added, which developers (mainly from the Oracle background) were missing from long time, and that is CREATE OR ALTER option while creating programming modules, like:

1. Stored Procedures (SP)

2. Functions (UDFs)

3. Views

4. Triggers

–> Now you can create a new Stored Procedure without checking its existence, simply by using the new CREATE OR ALTER option, like below:

CREATE OR ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.spgetEmployeeDetails
	@EmpID INT
AS
BEGIN
	SELECT BusinessEntityID, Title, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName 
	FROM Person.Person
	WHERE BusinessEntityID = @EmpID
END
GO

… you can execute the above code multiple times and it won’t fail. First time this CREATEs the SP, next time it will ALTER it.

–> Previously you need to add an IF EXISTS() condition to check if the SP already exists or not. If exists then drop and then create a new SP, like:

IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_NAME = 'spgetEmployeeDetails')
	DROP PROCEDURE dbo.spgetEmployeeDetails
GO

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.spgetEmployeeDetails
	@EmpID INT
AS
BEGIN
	SELECT BusinessEntityID, Title, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName 
	FROM Person.Person
	WHERE BusinessEntityID = @EmpID
END
GO

SQL Server 2016 1st Service Pack (SP1) is out (download, new features & enhancements)

November 17, 2016 4 comments

Almost 6 months back i.e. on 1st June 2016 Microsoft released SQL Server 2016 RTM, i.e. full and final version, which you can [check and download here].

Yesterday (i.e. 16-Nov-2016) Microsoft released the 1st Service Pack (SP1) of SQL Server 2016.

–> Download:

To download the SQL Server 2016 SP1 you can Register and Download the Full version or Free evaluation version (180 days).

… or you can Download the new Setup utility here, which provides you option to do a Basic or Custom installation, or download the ISO or CAB file (~2.5 GB).

… or you can also just download the Service Pack (SP1) (~550 MB), instead of the whole Setup (~2.5 GB).

–> What’s new SP1:

1. Features which were only available in Enterprise edition are now enabled in Standard, Web, Express, and LocalDB editions, link.

2. List of Bugs and issues fixed, link.

3. CREATE OR ALTER syntax for Stored Procedures, Views, Functions, and Triggers.

4. DBCC CLONEDATABASE (source_database_name, target_database_name), with optional WITH NO_STATISTICS, NO_QUERYSTORE. Creates a duplicate database by cloning Schema, metadata and statistics, without the data.

5. OPTION (USE HINT(‘hint1’, ‘hint2’)), support for a more generic query hinting is added, link.

6. Post this Service Pack (SP1) Parallel INSERTs in INSERT..SELECT to local temporary tables is disabled by default and will require TABLOCK hint for parallel insert to be enabled.

7. New DMVs are added, and some enhanced:
   – sys.dm_exec_valid_use_hints to list hints
   – sys.dm_exec_query_statistics_xml to return showplan XML transient statistics
   – sys.dm_db_incremental_stats_properties to check incremental statistics for the specified table
   – New column instant_file_initialization_enabled is added to sys.dm_server_services, to allow DBAs to programmatically identify if Instant File initialization (IFI) is in effect at the SQL Server service startup.
   – New column estimated_read_row_count is added to sys.dm_exec_query_profiles
   – New columns sql_memory_model and sql_memory_model_desc are added to sys.dm_os_sys_info, to provide information about the locking model for memory pages, and to allow DBAs to programmatically identify if Lock Pages in Memory (LPIM) privilege is in effect at the service startup time.