Completing the Introduction to Transact-SQL
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In the first half of this series we learned the basics of Transact-SQL. In case you missed it, I strongly suggest you check it out before moving on with this segment. The programming concepts demonstrated there stand for a foundation on which we are going to build today. The first part of this series was also published here on ASP Free.
Now that you're revisited the previous article and your memory is refreshed, let me tell you what we're going to learn in this final part of the series. First, the TRY...CATCH construct will be presented. We covered the RETURN in the first segment. In this segment, you will see that RAISERROR is quite similar since it is a crucial part of error handling, just like RETURN. You will find out when to use which one.
Furthermore, as I promised, we are going to cover particular techniques for working with the cursors, and ultimately we will play around with functions. T-SQL sports a vast number of built-in functions, so that's all fine and dandy, but we also have the ability to create user-defined functions (UDFs). Once we get there, we will point out why user-defined functions shouldn't be confused with stored procedures.
Moreover, all three types of UDFs that are possible with MS SQL Server are going to be explained and exemplified. These are scalar functions, inline table-valued functions, and multistatement table-valued functions.
In short, you can anticipate the aforementioned throughout this part. That means we are prepared and ready to go. Enjoy the ride!
Next: Error Handling >>
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