I guess that many people using UPDATE … FROM on a daily basis do so without being aware that they are violating all SQL standards.   All versions of the ANSI SQL standard that I checked agree that an UPDATE statement has three clauses – the UPDATE clause, naming the table to be updated; the SET clause, specifying the columns to change and ...

Within the SQL Server community, there is so much publicity on T-SQL set-oriented processing as good practice and the use of T-SQL cursors as bad practice that  T-SQL cursors are effectively being seen as a plague to be avoided when in fact it's not the use of T-SQ cursors, but their misuse, that should be avoided. To be fair, I must say that ...

Did you know that SQL Server allows stored procedures to have up to 2100 parameters? And more important: do you care? Well, some people do care, and Joe Celko seems to be one of them.   If you are a regular reader of SQL Server newsgroups, you probably know Joe Celko from his always unfriendly and often incorrect replies. Here is a typical ...