September 2010
Intermediate to advanced
1704 pages
111h 8m
English
Querying and manipulation of sparse columns is the same as for regular columns, with one exception described later in this chapter. There’s nothing functionally different about a table that includes sparse columns, except the way the sparse columns are stored. You can still use all the standard INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements on tables with sparse columns just like a table that doesn’t have sparse columns. You can also wrap operations on a table with sparse columns in transactions as usual.
To work with sparse columns, let’s first create a table with sparse columns. Listing 42.20 creates a version of the Product table in the AdventureWorks2008R2 database and then populates the table with data from the Production.Product ...