Software Blog: Database Development

One of my biggest annoyances about SQL Server is the inability to load a database from a later version into a previous one. Database files and backups don't have any indicators of their version (unless you are OCD enough to enforce naming conventions) so whenever I get a backup file from a client (or from my archive) it's a crapshoot which server it belongs to.

Worst of all, restoring it to a LATER version IS supported, so if I have an SQL Server 2005 backup and restore it to my local SQL Server 2008, it works fine. Then when I ...

As I'm beginning work on my senior project, I have discovered the need to select a specific number of rows from a SELECT query in SQL Server 2000. Although the new 2005 version has the built in ability to pass a variable for the TOP clause, no such functionality exists in SQL SERVER 2000. Fortunately I found a great resource showing various ways to accomplish it. The best one in my opinion is to pass the variable into the SET ROWCOUNT command, which can take a variable as a value:


CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.getFoo
@top INT
AS
BEGIN
SET ROWCOUNT ...