Export Table to CSV File – step by step

A very common requirement with SQL Server is to export a table to a csv file. It’s actually an easy task when using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). The export method actually behind the scenes uses SSIS wizard which also gives you an option to save the package that performs the export, however saving the package is often not necessary. The permissions you need to perform this, are merely read permissions on the table. Here are the steps broken out in detail. Right-click on the database that contains the table and choose tasks -> Export Data… Click next past the intro screen and on the “Choose a Data Source Screen” make sure the database that contains your table is listed in the drop down. Then Select Next. On the “Choose a Destination” Window, select “Flat File Destination” in the top drop down box labeled “Destination”. On the same “Choose a Destination” Window, click the “Browse” button and the Open file dialog box appears prompting you to find a location for your file. Find the location, then type in the file name. THEN to the right of the file name text box, change the drop down from “Text Files (*.txt)” to “CSV Files (*.csv)” As shown below. While still on the same “Choose a Destination” window, select whether you want the column names to be included in the CSV by selecting the “Column names in first data row” check box. Then Select Next. On the “Specify Table Copy or Query” window […] Continue reading ...

Search Procedure Text

This has to be one of the most common repetitive functions needed for development. Updating a certain column in a specific table and want to find all the procedures that are affected by that? You’ll need to use an object search. There are a few different methods for doing this. The ANSI standard method using the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES system views have not in the past contained all of the stored procedure text. Only the first 8000 characters or so. (If I’m wrong on that, don’t challenge me because I don’t care). Simple snippet [cc lang=”sql”] SELECT sm.*, so.* FROM sys.sql_modules sm WITH (NOLOCK) INNER JOIN sys.objects so WITH (NOLOCK) ON sm.[object_id] = so.[object_id] WHERE sm.definition LIKE ‘%table_name%’ [/cc] However if you’re going to be using this search a lot, and I can’t imagine you’re not, then why not encapsulate it in a stored procedure so you can include multiple terms, exclude terms, and sort. You will have to place this procedure in each database you want to search however. Stored Procedure: sp_search [cc lang=”sql”] USE master GO CREATE PROCEDURE spsearch @include varchar(max) = NULL, @sort varchar(5) = 1, — 1 =’name_asc’ 2 = ‘name_desc’ 3 = ‘date_desc’, 4 = ‘date_asc’ @exclude varchar(max) = NULL AS — EXEC sp_search ‘UPDATE,products,status’, 3 BEGIN SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED; DECLARE @Delimiter varchar(max) = ‘,’ IF OBJECT_ID(N’tempdb..#split’) IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #split ;WITH split(stpos,endpos) AS( SELECT 0 AS stpos, CHARINDEX(@delimiter,@include) AS endpos UNION ALL SELECT CAST(endpos+1 as int), CHARINDEX(@delimiter,@include,endpos+1) FROM split WHERE endpos […]

How to do basic Performance Tuning on Microsoft SQL Server

1)  FIND THE CULPRITS Like other software’s, we need to understand that MS SQL server is also a computer program but a complex program. Here Microsoft written this complex program. So if there is any problem with the SQL server, we need to understand why this program is not running as we expected. From SQL Server we need to pull and push data as fast & accurate as possible. If we face any issues, reasons may be SQL Server (complex program) needs certain hardware and installation settings which we are not providing properly. The way SQL Server implemented and the way it understands T-SQL code, we are not providing proper T-SQL code to it Even though MS SQL Server is a proprietary software, they provided us a lot of ways to understand the Server and what’s going on inside so that we can use it efficiently. If the SQL server is running without errors, first we need to calculate wait statistics of different threads. SQL server uses threads for every user request. Again a thread is nothing but another program inside complex program which is called SQL server (This thread is not Operating system thread on which SQL server installed. This is related to SQLOS thread which is a pseudo operating system for the SQL Server). We can find wait statistics using “sys.dm_os_wait_stats” DMV. There are many scripts online to query this view as per your needs. I like Paul Randal script(http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/wait-statistics-or-please-tell-me-where-it-hurts) [cc lang=”sql] WITH [Waits] AS (SELECT [wait_type], [wait_time_ms] […] Continue reading ...

Creating log tables to track running processes

In any SQL Server system, you will have jobs that run on a schedule or at specified intervals. In these cases, it’s always nice to keep track of certain aspects over time, so you can compare when things go wrong or how performance has been affected over time. In my experience these are indepsensible when it comes to troubleshooting, and for running delta jobs. Here we’ll show a small example of the log tables you can create to facilitate this. First let’s look at some DDL for 2 different tables: [cc lang=”sql”] CREATE TABLE [dbo].[ProcessLogMaster]( [process_log_master_id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT PK_process_log_master PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED NOT NULL, [process_master_name] [varchar](100) NOT NULL, [datetime_start] [datetime] NULL DEFAULT (getdate()), [datetime_end] [datetime] NULL, [elapsed_ms] [int] NULL, [rows_updated] [int] NULL, [rows_inserted] [int] NULL, [rows_deleted] [int] NULL, [complete] [tinyint] NULL DEFAULT ((0)), [success] [tinyint] NULL, [error_description] [varchar](max) NULL ) CREATE TABLE [dbo].[ProcessLogDetail]( [process_log_detail_id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT [PK_process_log_detail] PRIMARY KEY, [process_log_master_id] [int] NOT NULL, [process_detail_name] [varchar](100) NOT NULL, [datetime_start] [datetime] NULL, [datetime_end] [datetime] NULL, [elapsed_ms] [int] NULL, [rows_updated] [int] NULL, [rows_inserted] [int] NULL, [rows_deleted] [int] NULL, [complete] [tinyint] NULL, [success] [tinyint] NULL, [error_description] [varchar](max) NULL ) [/cc] What we have here are two different tables that can be used to describe job steps. The ProcessLogMaster table, is used to specify the Master or Top level of the job. If there are multiple steps to the job, that report back to the master, we would enter their entries into the ProcessLogDetail table. We could then sum up the […]