Take a look at this code which I found a while back in a stored proc
- declare @id int,@xtype char(1),@uid int,@info int,@status int
- set @id =(select id from sysobjects where name = 'sysobjects')
- set @xtype =(select xtype from sysobjects where name = 'sysobjects')
- set @uid =(select uid from sysobjects where name = 'sysobjects')
- set @info =(select info from sysobjects where name = 'sysobjects')
- set @status =(select status from sysobjects where name = 'sysobjects')
- select @id ,@xtype ,@uid ,@info ,@status
- go
Do you see what is wrong? It uses five select statements to accomplish something which can be done in one. I would do something like this instead.
- declare @id int,@xtype char(1),@uid int,@info int,@status int
- select @id =id
- ,@xtype =xtype
- ,@uid =uid
- ,@info =info
- ,@status =status
- from sysobjects where name = 'sysobjects'
- select @id ,@xtype ,@uid ,@info ,@status
Let's take a look at another example.
What we want to do is display a row of counts for 4 xtypes from the sysobjects table, here is an example
s u p c 19 143 74 6
Have you ever seen code like this that does that? I have!
- select count(*) as [s],
- (select count(*) from sysobjects where xtype = 'u') as [u],
- (select count(*) from sysobjects where xtype = 'p') as [p],
- (select count(*) from sysobjects where xtype = 'c') as [c]
- from sysobjects
- where xtype = 's'
That code will do a select 4 times against the table
A better way would be to do this
- select sum(case xtype when 's' then 1 else 0 end) as [s],
- sum(case xtype when 'u' then 1 else 0 end) as [u],
- sum(case xtype when 'p' then 1 else 0 end) as [p],
- sum(case xtype when 'c' then 1 else 0 end) as [c]
- from sysobjects
- where xtype in('s','u','p','c')
In SQL server 2005/2008 you can use the PIVOT operator, here is what the query would look like
- SELECT s, u, p, c
- FROM
- (SELECT xtype
- FROM sysobjects
- WHERE xtype IN('s','u','p','c')) AS pivTemp
- PIVOT
- ( count(xtype)
- FOR xtype IN(s, u, p, c)
- ) AS pivTable
If you can think of any other examples feel free to leave a comment






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