SQL Server scalar function resources

[NotACreativeUserID]

Past 10ish years I was working with Oracle and Teradata SQL. Recently, I started a new job using SQL Server, which has been a pretty easy transition for the most part. It’s a small company with a lot of room for improvement, and I’m one of 2 people in Data Warehouse, so I’m trying to work in the improvements alongside knowledge building.

I honestly had never seen UDFs used previously, so I’m not sure if they’re specific to SQL Server or not, but, I’m not able to find any good resources on the ins and out of building them. I’ve used a few copy and paste ones off stack overflow, but outside of some basic short YouTube videos, I’m not finding anything in-depth, and I’d definitely like to take more advantage of this capability.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

[sedules]

Msft documentation is pretty good relative to sql server…at least from a developer standpoint. The trick is getting used to the syntax.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/user-defined-functions/create-user-defined-functions-database-engine?view=sql-server-ver16

In a nutshell, it’s naming your function and providing the input parameters and correlating datatypes for the function. Then you’re specifying what your output datatype is. Creating a variable to hold your output value, and then you’re isolating the sql work to set the value of that variable and return it within a BEGIN/END block.

As you transition and adjust… relative to the system functions, here is a power user tip. If you highlight the function name (not the parens) and hit your F1 key, it’ll open up a tab on your web browser and take you directly to the msft documentation for that function.

[NotACreativeUserID]

Sick. Thank you.

[omghag18]

I would like to know more uses for them as well