Sunday 15 April 2012

What is SQL Profiler?

SQL Profiler is a graphical tool that allows system administrators to monitor events in an instance of Microsoft SQL Server. You can capture and save data about each event to a file or SQL Server table to analyze later. For example, you can monitor a production environment to see which stored procedures are hampering performances by executing too slowly.
Use SQL Profiler to monitor only the events in which you are interested. If traces are becoming too large, you can filter them based on the information you want, so that only a subset of the event data is collected. Monitoring too many events adds overhead to the server and the monitoring process and can cause the trace file or trace table to grow very large, especially when the monitoring process takes place over a long period of time.

What are the properties and different Types of Sub-Queries?

  1. Properties of Sub-Query
    1. A sub-query must be enclosed in the parenthesis.
    2. A sub-query must be put in the right hand of the comparison operator, and
    3. A sub-query cannot contain an ORDER-BY clause.
    4. A query can contain more than one sub-query.
  2. Types of Sub-Query
    1. Single-row sub-query, where the sub-query returns only one row.
    2. Multiple-row sub-query, where the sub-query returns multiple rows,. and
    3. Multiple column sub-query, where the sub-query returns multiple columns

What is difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE commands?

Delete command removes the rows from a table based on the condition that we provide with a WHERE clause. Truncate will actually remove all the rows from a table and there will be no data in the table after we run the truncate command.
  1. TRUNCATE:
    1. TRUNCATE is faster and uses fewer system and transaction log resources than DELETE.
    2. TRUNCATE removes the data by deallocating the data pages used to store the table's data, and only the page deallocations are recorded in the transaction log.
    3. TRUNCATE removes all rows from a table, but the table structure, its columns, constraints, indexes and so on, remains. The counter used by an identity for new rows is reset to the seed for the column.
    4. You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on a table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint. Because TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged, it cannot activate a trigger.
    5. TRUNCATE cannot be rolled back.
    6. TRUNCATE is DDL Command.
    7. TRUNCATE Resets identity of the table
  2. DELETE:
    1. DELETE removes rows one at a time and records an entry in the transaction log for each deleted row.
    2. If you want to retain the identity counter, use DELETE instead. If you want to remove table definition and its data, use the DROP TABLE statement.
    3. DELETE Can be used with or without a WHERE clause
    4. DELETE Activates Triggers.
    5. DELETE can be rolled back.
    6. DELETE is DML Command.
    7. DELETE does not reset identity of the table.
Note: DELETE and TRUNCATE both can be rolled back when surrounded by TRANSACTION if the current session is not closed. If TRUNCATE is written in Query Editor surrounded by TRANSACTION and if session is closed, it can not be rolled back but DELETE can be rolled back.

What are different types of Collation Sensitivity?

  1. Case sensitivity - A and a, B and b, etc.
  2. Accent sensitivity
  3. Kana Sensitivity - When Japanese kana characters Hiragana and Katakana are treated differently, it is called Kana sensitive.
  4. Width sensitivity - A single-byte character (half-width) and the same character represented as a double-byte character (full-width) are treated differently than it is width sensitive.

What are the different index configurations a table can have?

A table can have one of the following index configurations:
  1. No indexes
  2. A clustered index
  3. A clustered index and many nonclustered indexes
  4. A nonclustered index
  5. Many nonclustered indexes

What is User Defined Functions? What kind of User-Defined Functions can be created?

User-Defined Functions allow defining its own T-SQL functions that can accept 0 or more parameters and return a single scalar data value or a table data type.
Different Kinds of User-Defined Functions created are:

  1. Scalar User-Defined Function A Scalar user-defined function returns one of the scalar data types. Text, ntext, image and timestamp data types are not supported. These are the type of user-defined functions that most developers are used to in other programming languages. You pass in 0 to many parameters and you get a return value.
  2. Inline Table-Value User-Defined Function An Inline Table-Value user-defined function returns a table data type and is an exceptional alternative to a view as the user-defined function can pass parameters into a T-SQL select command and in essence provide us with a parameterized, non-updateable view of the underlying tables.
  3. Multi-statement Table-Value User-Defined Function A Multi-Statement Table-Value user-defined function returns a table and is also an exceptional alternative to a view as the function can support multiple T-SQL statements to build the final result where the view is limited to a single SELECT statement. Also, the ability to pass parameters into a TSQL select command or a group of them gives us the capability to in essence create a parameterized, non-updateable view of the data in the underlying tables. Within the create function command you must define the table structure that is being returned. After creating this type of user-defined function, It can be used in the FROM clause of a T-SQL command unlike the behavior found when using a stored procedure which can also return record sets.