Professional SQL Server™ 2005 Programming

Chapter 6. Asking a Better Question: Advanced Queries

It was a tough decision. Advanced query design before cursors, or cursors before advanced query design? You see, it's something of a chicken and egg thing (which came first?). Not that you need to know anything about cursors to make use of the topics covered in this chapter, but rather becausewe'll be discussing some benefits of different query methods that avoid cursors—and it really helpsto understand the benefits if you know what you're trying to avoid.

That said, I went for the advanced queries first notion. In the end, I figured I wanted to tryto get you thinking about non-cursor-based queries as much as possible before we start talking cursors. Since I figure that a large percentage of the readers of this book will already have experience in some programming language, I know that you're going to have a natural tendency to think of things in a procedural fashion rather than a "set" fashion. Since cursors are a procedural approach, the odds are you're going to think of the more complex problems in terms of cursors first rather than how you could do it in a single query.

Suffice to say that I want to challenge you in this chapter. Even if you don't have that much procedural programming experience, the fact is that your brain has a natural tendency to break complex problems down into their smaller subparts (subprocedures — logical steps) as opposed to as a whole (the "set," or SQL way). My challenge to you is to try and see ...