How can we perform "convex optimization" in SQL queries and functions?

a real gem in Sql Server 2008. mostly people still using Stored procedure may be they shifted to SQL Server but they are not using TVF right now.

A function is a section of code that is used to perform an isolated assignment. Once it has performed its assignment, the function can be accessed to present its result(s).

In Transact-SQL, a function is considered an object. After creating the function object, it becomes part of a database. You can then execute it when necessary.

While your primary job as a database developer consists of creating lists, probably your second most important job is to assist your users with the various assignments they must perform on your application. One way you can assist is to use functions that perform otherwise complex tasks. We introduced and described functions in the previous lesson. To assist your development with the different tasks of a database, Transact-SQL ships with various already created and tested functions. You just need to be aware of these functions, their syntax, and the results they produce.

Text and image functions operate on TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types. These data types are deprecated with SQL Server 2005 and should be replaced by VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX) and VARBINARY(MAX) when possible. Alternatively you can also consider storing large string values using XML data type. Text and image functions are nondeterministic.

Future versions of SQL Server will not support TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types. Columns with TEXT / NTEXT data type do not support commonly used string functions such as LEN, LEFT, RIGHT, etc. Furthermore, due to the large size of TEXT data you''re likely to see performance issues if you store such data in the database. However, at times you can''t help but use the TEXT / NTEXT / IMAGE data types (for example when supporting 3rd party databases when you cannot change the schema) - this is when text and image functions come in handy.

Date and time functions allow you to manipulate columns and variables with DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME data types.

1 DATEPART Function
2 DATENAME Function
3 DAY, MONTH, and YEAR Functions
4 GETDATE and GETUTCDATE Functions
5 DATEADD Functions
6 DATEDIFF Function
7 More SQL Server Functions

The muscle behind the actual asynchronous calls comes from JavaScript. I looked around at a bunch of existing JavaScript libraries and settled on JQuery because of the way it leverages existing CSS knowledge. The three things that the library should do easily are:

Aggregate functions return a single value summarizing a given data set. All aggregate functions are deterministic. NOTE: AVG, SUM, STDEV, STDEVP, VAR and VARP functions cannot operate on BIT data types; they can operate on all other numeric data types.

Date and time functions allow you to manipulate columns and variables with DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME data types.

A cursor allows looping through a record set and performing a certain operation on each record within the set. SQL Server supports three functions that can help you while working with cursors: @@FETCH_STATUS, @@CURSOR_ROWS and CURSOR_STATUS. Cursor functions are non-deterministic.

String functions let you extract various portions of character strings, change the case of strings, concatenate and reverse strings and perform many other types of manipulations. All built-in string functions are deterministic with the exception of CHARINDEX and PATINDEX

Text and image functions operate on TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types. These data types are deprecated with SQL Server 2005 and should be replaced by VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX) and VARBINARY(MAX) when possible. Alternatively you can also consider storing large string values using XML data type. Text and image functions are nondeterministic.

User Defined Functions are compact pieces of Transact SQL code, which can accept parameters, and return either a value, or a table. They are saved as individual work units, and are created using standard SQL commands. Data transformation and reference value retrieval are common uses for functions. LEFT, the built in function for getting the left part of a string, and GETDATE, used for obtaining the current date and time, are two examples of function use. User Defined Functions enable the developer or DBA to create functions of their own, and save them inside SQL Server.

The essential date and time functions that every SQL Server database should have to ensure that you can easily manipulate dates and times without the need for any formatting considerations at all.

The following sections in this topic provide an overview of all Transact-SQL date and time data types and functions. For information and examples that are common to date and time data types and functions

SQL cursors have been a curse to database programming for many years because of their poor performance. On the other hand, they are extremely useful because of their flexibility in allowing very detailed data manipulations at the row level. Using cursors against SQL Server tables can often be avoided by employing other methods, such as using derived tables, set-based queries, and temp tables

Hey guys, I have these two queries I'd like to combine into one.  Is there any way of doing it?

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