This code shows you how to get the meta information about your database, nice for making interfaces which can edit any database, etc.

In Northwind, create a table called "Members" with the fields FirstName and LastName. The execute this statement and you will see how only the first and last name from Employees are put into the table Members.

To format dates in and SQL command, use the funcation CONVERT function, see the documentation for other formats.

When updating a database you have to be careful that you don't forget a WHERE clause and change everything. Therefore in SQL Query Analyzer it is good to work in the following manner: (1) do your select statement so you can SEE which records will be affected, (2) then add your update statement and COMMENT OUT the select statement (important), (3) then comment out the UPDATE and WHERE statements so that you see all of your records.

If you need to have the results from SELECT statement to be in random order, use the NEWID() function.

The SQL CASE command can save you lots of SELECT backbending, here is an example. This works in SQL Server but should work in other databases, too, try it out.

If you have an website with an SQL Server at an ISP, then you need to be able to copy database tables back and forth from your development computer to your ISP. I went though a number of constellations of settings before I found a sure-fire way to do it with the DTS wizard, here is I do it, you may need to tweek it a bit if, for instance, you need to also copy triggers, etc.

I was looking around for ways of finding out how big tables and databases are in SQL Server. Here are some code snippets which do the job.

This code shows you how to get a standard date regardless of the localization of the server?

One of the problems when adding a parent and child record is that you need the ID number of the parent to create the child. This code shows you how to do it with the @@IDENTITY.