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Finding rows that don't exist in an SQL Server 2005 table

DakotaPaul — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:24:41 -0800

I can't seem to build a query in SQL Server 2005 that returns rows that are not in a table. I have a table called sch that includes student IDs and the periods for which the students are scheduled:



id    period

111   1

111   2

111   3

111   4

111   5

Table att includes student IDs and the dates and periods they attended:



id    date         period

111   2009-10-01   1

111   2009-10-01   2

111   2009-10-01   3

111   2009-10-01   4

111   2009-10-01   5

111   2009-10-02   1

111   2009-10-02   2

111   2009-10-02   3

111   2009-10-02   5

111   2009-10-03   1

111   2009-10-03   2

111   2009-10-03   3

111   2009-10-03   5

In this example, the attendance for student 111, period 4, is missing for 2009-10-02 and 2009-10-03. How can I build a query to get that result? Ideally, the query would return:



id    date         period

111   2009-10-02   4

111   2009-10-03   4

I've tried a left join on the tables between the IDs and periods but it's not getting me what I need. Any help is appreciated.

How does WITH work in MS SQL Server?

DakotaPaul — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:05:43 -0800

Can someone help me understand how the WITH common table expression works in Microsoft SQL Server? I'd like to learn more about how the WITH common table expression works in Microsoft SQL Server. I saw an example in the SQL Cookbook, but don't quite understand it. Can one of you SQL gurus break it down a bit for me?

Here's the data in the emp table:

deptno ename ------ -------- 10 CLARK 10 KING 10 MILLER 20 FORD 20 ADAMS 30 MARTIN 30 BLAKE 30 ALLEN

The WITH common table expression:

with x (deptno, cnt, names, empno, len) as ( select deptno, count(*) over (partition by deptno), cast(ename as varchar(100)), empno, 1 from emp union all select x.deptno, x.cnt, cast(x.names + ',' + e.ename as varchar(100)), e.empno, x.len+1 from emp e, x where e.deptno = x.deptno and e.empno > x.empno ) select deptno, names from x where len = cnt order by 1

The results:

deptno names ------ ---------------------- 10 CLARK, KING, MILLER 20 FORD, ADAMS 30 MARTIN, BLAKE, ALLEN

What is the best way to host an ASP.NET website?

talkingmuffin — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:55:46 -0800

What is the best way to host an ASP.NET website? I'm the Sysadmin for a small non-profit and am beginning the process of a website redesign/redevelopment. I figure this is a good time to also take a look at how the site is hosted.

Our website uses DotNetNuke running under Windows 2003/SQL Server/ASP.NET. Right now we rent out 1U of rack space from a local company @ $150/month plus $4/GB of data transfer. We usually end up using 15GB per month.

I'd appreciate some advice on the following options:

1. Keep renting rack space
2. Host the site locally on a dedicated server
3. Host the site locally on a virtual server
4. Host the site remotely on a virtual private server

Right now I'm leaning towards a remote VPS due to cost savings, increased reliability and ease of upgrading.

If you do end up recommending a remote VPS do you have any recommendations on good providers?

Can SQL Server and IIS live happily ever after?

JohnFredra — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:29:00 -0800

Hosting SQL Server and IIS on the same co-located server: Good idea, bad idea, or terrible idea? I'm looking to reduce the discrete points of failure on my co-lo'd servers. I've got one machine running SQL Server 2005 (with replication) and a separate machine IIS 6.0, both on Windows Server 2003. Our client software talks to both to SQL Server and IIS via ports that are open to the internet, but the two servers do not currently have any need to communicate with one another. We chose to go with this setup primarily as a security measure to prevent exploits for either of SQL Server or IIS from granting someone trivial access to the other, and to date this has worked pretty well.

If we were to host both SQL Server and IIS on the same box, what can we do to maximize our security given that both must be accessible from the internet? Are there any best practices associated with this, or is it just roundly rejected as a bad idea?

I'll do my best to fill in any details I've left out -- I'm not the IT guy, but I've hopefully enough working knowledge of the configuration to provide more context. Thank you!

Hello end user! Just FYI, the admin password to this database is: xyz

aydeejones — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:34:34 -0800

What might cause a SQLOLEDB connection string (containing an admin username/password) to briefly appear on-screen in a browser session and would I be crazy to buy a product that's had this bug for who knows how long without realizing it? I'm evaluating an expensive, best-of-breed piece of software (seriously, you'd be shocked! shocked! to hear who it is) with a major web-based component...when end users log in, there's a brief flicker on-screen wherein the full database connection string is visible, in all its MSSQL-authentication-password-in-clear-text (with db_owner privileges) glory.

Apparently this has gone unnoticed for quite some time and the company has reproduced the issue (they see the brief flickering of text), but can't figure out what's causing it, and is trying to enlist my help in resolving it by WebExing into my machine (even though they can reproduce it from their environment).

Their current challenge is that they can't press the printscreen key at the right moment to actually capture the text and verify that the problem is in fact real, which took me all of one minute to figure out (I guess you need the rhythm of an improvisational keyboard player or somethin').

The web component is mostly built in ASP Classic, mostly VB, though I'm seeing some JScript here and there. I'd rather not dig through all of their code myself, which is not my responsibility, but I thought this would be a good question for the Hive Mind to chew on -- what could cause this, and should I be doing business with this company?

I'm also put off by using a db_owner account for simple end user activity, and the lack of Windows authentication (from a SQL standpoint -- the app does support Windows authentication for logging in), though it seems way-too-many off-the-shelf-products tend to do this, and in our pursuit for software built on best practices, we are constantly disappointed and our options are always so narrow.

I'm pretty familiar with ASP but not so much with JScript. I could see how a developer would Response.Write a connection string for debugging purposes, but can't imagine how this would go unnoticed for so long in a major commercial application.

Can you think of any other trigger that would cause the connection string to appear, other than the developer specifically saying "print the damn thing on-screen?"

More specifically, what appears on-screen is:



$DOMAIN\Username$ [populated with real information, of course]

SQLOLEDB Connection String

C:\Program Files\Path\To\Application\Server\Folder

Sure looks like debug code, eh?

Translating 's/ */ /g' into T-SQL?

pompomtom — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:06:56 -0800

Fixing whitespace: Can someone translate 's/ */ /g' into T-SQL? Within a field I need to contract any number of spaces above one to one. LTRIM and RTRIM aren't any use, and while I can (and, indeed, have) bodged up a bunch of nested REPLACE(field, ' ', ' ') (that should be two spaces then one - but will be squished because MeFi knows how to do this!) together, I'm hoping there's a better way, which will deal with any number of spaces, without me filling the query with a bajillion nested REPLACE functions.

More SQL help, please

omnipotentq — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:25:56 -0800

Another SQL question (*sigh*), but this time a bit more complicated. There is a column in my database called 'Contact'. It is currently null for about 140k of the 148K entries. There are two other columns called 'Lastname' and 'Firstname' in my database, which are either populated with data or one or the other or both are null.

I want all entries in the column 'Contact' that are null to be a combination of the 'Firstname' and 'Lastname' columns by taking the value in 'Firstname' appending a space then appending the value in 'Lastname' to it, and sticking that into the 'Contact' column. Because some entries may have only a first name, only a last name or neither, I still want to stick with that logic, since I want the information in the Contact column, even if it's just copying a space back into it.

How can I go about doing this? I'm running SQL Server 2005 and have the management studio, FWIW.

BTW, I can do a select statement that gets the 140k entries in which the contact value is null, but I want to make sure that I overwrite those values only, not the other 8k or so entries whose contact values are not null.

Thanks to all in advance!

Synchronize databases....3...2...1... NOW!

advicepig — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:50:53 -0800

What's the best way to keep data one way synchronized between an internal Mircosoft SQL Server database and a web facing mySQL database? So we have an internal system that's based on SQL Server. I've created numerous DTS packages for moving SQL Server data from the inside SQL Server to a SQL Server at our ISP with some complex transformations, but what I really need to do now is move data from our internal SQL Server to a mySQL database.

Here are some requirements and complications.

1. The internal SQL Server system doesn't have any obvious way to see what's changed in a days work.

2. The mySQL server should know when a row was last modified!

3. We can have as many supplemental tables on either database, but no changes can be made to the exisiting SQL Server tables.

4. Assume SQL Server 2000 and the mySQL version is rather up to date, but completely flexible on the mySQL side.

Are any of those database synchronization tools out there decent? The internal database is mission critical, so it's vital that it not be fouled up.

How do I set up a SQL Server 2000 DSN connection when moving servers?

bcwinters — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:49:59 -0800

IANA IT professional, but I need to move our SQL Server database from one server to another server. I can't get the DSN connections to work now that we're on the new server; can you please hold my hand? Our office is upgrading to a new server this weekend. Both servers are Windows Small Business Server 2003 (using SQL Server 2000).

We had one database on the old server called OURGREATDB. I detached it in Enterprise Manager, copied it onto a thumb drive, placed it in the folder that our IT consultant set up for SQL Server on the new machine, and attached it there. It looked like it worked just fine; I can browse tables, etc, in EM no problem. Now the new server is all set up on our LAN and our users have joined its domain, etc. The old server is disconnected and out of the picture.

Users on the LAN connect to the database using an Access 2003 front end and a DSN connection (I know, I know, we should switch to something better--I can worry about that on Monday once this is all working). I tried changing the DSN connection on a user's computer and it won't authenticate ('Login failed for user BOB'). This is using SQL Server authentication with the new server name, along with the same ID and password that worked on the old server. I can see user BOB in EM on the server just fine.

So I guess my question is, how do I manage the IDs and Passwords on the new SQL Server to make them work the way they did before switching machines?

I did change a setting in EM on the new server to allow both windows & sql server authentication (then stopped and started) but I don't really understand how any of this works so I'm not sure where (if anywhere) the password needs to be reentered on the new server.

If anyone can make sense of what I'm asking I'll be eternally grateful. Small words and short sentences, please--I'm a hack at this and our IT consultant has no SQL Server experience at all. Thanks!

Right Place, Wrong Time

dw — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:37:07 -0800

I have a set of dates/times in a MS SQL table that lack a timezone offset. I want to convert them to UTC, but I have to be mindful of Daylight Time for each of these dates (they're in the future). How can I convert them to UTC correctly? The nuts and bolts are these:
We have a calendaring application with an MS SQL Server 2000 backend. When event dates get entered into the system, they're entered without a timezone code, e.g.:

2007-11-13 12:00:00.000

Each of these events is in the future. Some are in March or April. We observe DST.

I'm making changes to the data feed so that we can implement the hCalendar microformat on our calendars. The problem is the time zone. hCalendar calls for dates like:

2007-11-13T12:00:00-08:00

Originally, one of the engineers slapped the current time offset from UTC on there. Unfortunately, if you're looking at the calendar while we're on standard time, an event that will be in DST will not be offset correctly, being an hour earlier or later.

So, back to the drawing board. We decided to convert all the dates to UTC before putting them in the data feed for the microformat. But the time zone problem came right back.

Is there an easy way to convert these future dates to the correct UTC that's mindful of what the DST offset is in the future? There's no function in MS SQL 2000 that allows you to look up whether a date is PDT or PST, is there?

I need to get part of a website onto a USB sick at will

Chuck Cheeze — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:15:21 -0800

I need to get part of a website onto a USB sick at will I have a client for my web development biz that has a website in ASP (classic) and SQL Server Express. The old version of the site had some method where certain customers of this client, who had been given a USB stick by my client, could hit a certain page on the site and it would prompt them for a download location, and they could choose the USB stick and then it would download a certian part of the website to the stick as a self contained little site that they could run on their computer from the stick.

I understand being able to open a webpage from a USB stick and browse the "local" site that is on the stick, no problem. But my question is how to make static, local, browseable pages out of a dynamic SQL server based site?

The site has a lot of products by a lot of manufacturers, and the pages that are downloaded are for a specific manufacturer. So its pulling a subset of info from the db and building out those pages and saving them as static ones.

Where's Enterprise Manager?

SpecialK — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:27:31 -0800

I have Visual Studio 2005 Professional. I installed VS2k5Pro with all of the options except the sample databases on my WinXP box, but now I can't figure out how to access the Enterprise Manager - replacement ... Enterprise Management Studio, or even find out if that app is included with the version I have. Any suggestions?

How to determine if a record has a certain value at any given time.

SoulOnIce — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:13:46 -0800

I need some SQL Server/database design help. I have a custom built admin for an ecommerce site where we manage our orders. During the life of an order, it can have many statuses ... For example: In Process, Transmitted, Confirmed, Backordered, Shipped, Closed.

In my database I keep track of status changes in a table called Tracking. It's basically a log of status changes an order goes through and when. A sample data set for Order # 12111 might be something like:

Tracking
-------------
uid orderID statusID dateChanged
1 12111 5 7/1/2006
22 12111 21 7/1/2006
43 12111 7 7/3/2006
54 12111 8 7/5/2006
102 12111 7 7/8/2006
155 12111 15 7/15/2006

uid is the unique identifier for the record. StatusID is just a numeric unique identifier for the statusnames. The statusIDs don't progress sequentially in any way, meaning a statusID of 15 doesn't mean the order is further along in the process than a statusID of 7. DateChanged is the date the order was changed to that status.

Our accounting department wants to be able to do some kind of query to find out which orders were in a certain status on any given date or within a date range. For example, they might want to find all orders on Backorder (statusID=8) on 7/7/2006. What is the best way to do that?

Order 12111 would be one of those orders returned in the result set as it's status changed to backorder on 7/5/2006 and it didn't move to another status until 7/8/2006. How can I query for these records?

I'm hoping it can be done easily, but let's say it can't. What changes can I make to my Tracking table to be able to perform queries like that easily? Do I need to start keeping track of what the previous status is in each record? Something like:

Tracking
-------------
orderID oldstatusID statusID dateChanged
12111 1 5 7/1/2006

I really, really don't want to change the Tracking table because I know it would be a nightmare trying to back populate fields, etc. BUT if I have to, I will.

Help, please!

isql and bcp

joecacti — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 09:41:06 -0800

MS SQL Server Filter: I'm supporting a pretty old process that loads data into and out of SQL Server 6.5. The process uses isql and bcp from a SQL Server 2000 installation. Is there anywhere I can download these utilities for free, perhaps as part of a "SQL Server Client" tool? I have searched the M$ website...

"There's no place like home...."

Afroblanco — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:55:07 -0800

Need a tinker-free Linux/MySql install for Ruby On Rails. Also, seeking advice for getting started in RoR. Ok, I'll start this out by saying that I have little-to-no interest in operating systems. I've run Windows for the past decade or so because (for me, anyway) it's a no-effort solution that requires the least tinkering possible.

HOWEVER, I've recently been teaching myself Ruby On Rails, and it seems that RoR is most comfortable in a Unix/MySql environment. So here are the questions -

1) Am I correct in the assumption that the standard RoR setup is Unix/MySql? Is this what RoR is most comfortable with? Has anyone successfully run RoR on WinXP/SqlServer?
2) What Linux installation requires the least tinkering to get it to work properly?
3) Which Linux installation has the best community support?
4) Is there a way to install linux as a dual-boot on my WinXP system without reformatting, repartitioning, and reinstalling everything? Bonus points for solutions that involve only free tools.
5) What are some good MySql resources? Specifically, I'm looking for guides to dealing with installation and administration. Also, what are the best MySql community sites?
6) What resources would you suggest for someone starting out in RoR? I'm currently reading Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby as well as Agile Web Development In Rails. Are there any other books or guides that you would suggest? Are there any places where I can get some good sample code to play around with? What are some good community sites? (I should mention that I'm an experienced programmer, so I'm specifically looking for help with Ruby, not programming in general)

Sorry for the ton and a half of questions. If you could answer *any* of the above, your help will be greatly appreciated.

I don't want to be a country song.

auntbunny — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 08:37:38 -0800

Topping 400 and my dog is 14 1/2 years old... but it's not really about that. Stress from the past two years figures heavily when it comes to work issues and how I handle them. I stayed home with my child for a long time and have been back at work for three years. I work at an institution that very recently migrated from a circa 1996 frame-relay supported environment to new *everything*.

My most previous position was something that more fully funded institutions prefer a master's degree to do. I was very happy sitting behind my desk doing meticulous work that was somewhat independent. Everything I needed to look up was at my fingertips. I made the mistake (?) of learning the position quickly so my boss (and she told she supervisors this in a meeting) pushed me into a newly minted tech position because the institution can't afford a qualified tech person. I resent being pushed from something I loved doing. I loved it so much I didn't much mind not getting a raise with that position, but I feel my skills are being taken advantage of and more responsibility is being added on regularly. Never mind that you'd be shocked at how little I'm paid.

I enjoy the web part of my job and training others to use the new software. I enjoy that I'm *supposed* to be able to find time to do some of my old position's duties as a backup (which -ahem- is still desperately needed six months in) -that and Saturdays off are intended to be my perks since I didn't receive the raise I twice requested... funding, budget cuts, etc. This position also makes me visible as someone the director relies on, which makes at least two other employees want to give me *hell* on a regular basis. I blew up at one of them the other day and have yet to see what fallout will come from it, but am prepared.

Anyway, with the new system comes in expensive, in-depth training, which includes primarily SQL server and Crystal Reports elements. In order to determine if I can hang in another year, finally here is my question: This training is somewhat geared toward the field I'm in and the specific software we use. Without a degree to back it up, how beneficial would this training be in terms of finding another position?

How can I export data from SQL Server 2000 to QuarkXPress using ColdFusion?

kirkaracha — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 11:59:30 -0800

What's the best way to export data from a SQL Server 2000 database into QuarkXPress 4.11 using ColdFusion 5? [more inside] I'm considering either the XData and XCatalog XTensions from Em Software, tagging the data with XPress tags, or XML (which I don't have much experience with).