Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft® SQL Server T-SQL in 10 Minutes, Second Edition

Lesson 10. Using Data Manipulation Functions

In this lesson, you learn what functions are, what types of functions T-SQL supports, and how to use these functions.

Understanding Functions

Like almost any other computer language, SQL supports the use of functions to manipulate data. Functions are operations that are usually performed on data, usually to facilitate conversion and manipulation.

An example of a function is RTrim(), which we used in the last lesson to trim any spaces from the end of a string.

Note: Functions Are Less Portable Than SQL

Code that runs on multiple systems is said to be portable. Most SQL statements are relatively portable, and when differences between SQL implementations do occur they are usually not that difficult ...