Table-Valued Functions and CROSS APPLY in SQL Server
I ran into a situation where I wanted to use a table-valued function, which is just a function that returns a table. In my case I wanted to ...
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Reusable XSLT Transformations in .NET: Parameters and Extension Objects
When working with XML data, binding it to one of the standard ASP.NET controls does not always give you the flexibility to display it the wa...
Stored Procedure Optimization Tips
A few things I have settled on over the years when writing stored procedures. None of these are exotic, but they come up often enough to be ...
Enter Key Default Submit Button
Enter key behavior works a little differently in ASP.NET. With a single button on the form it is straightforward, since that button is the...
MaxLength with MultiLine TextBox
We have all run into this one. You use a TextArea , or a TextBox with MultiLine set to True, so the user can enter a long description or c...
Input Controls Highlight
Here is an easy way to add highlight effects to a web form so the user can see which control has focus. The idea uses a BasePage , a class...
Queries to retrieve table information
If you do not have a third party tool available to build a list of table definitions for you, with field names, data types, sizes and so on,...
Query to retrieve a list of SQL objects (tables or stored procedures)
Ever needed to figure out how many tables or stored procedures were going to be affected by some design change in one of your tables, like a...
Building a Split() Function in SQL Server
So you have a delimited list of values and you want to pass them to SQL as a single parameter and use them in a query. One approach is to ...
Using COALESCE to Build Comma-Delimited String
This is one of my favorite little tricks in SQL Server. I do not need it often, but it is a clean way to build a delimited string compared t...
Recursive Page.FindControl for VB.Net with Generics
This makes life much easier when you are trying to get to controls that are themselves contained within other containers, for example a Text...
Recursive Page.FindControl for C#
This makes life much easier when you are trying to get to controls that are themselves contained within other containers, for example a Text...
C# Versus VB
The C# versus VB.NET debate used to come up constantly, and it generated more heat than light. The point I always thought mattered most is t...
#temp table vs. @table variable
I try to avoid temp tables when I can, but there are plenty of cases where there is no better way to do something. For a long time I used ...