Every so often we need to build a report with a number of complicated calculations that we need to perform at the detail, group or summary level in the report. Maybe we need to calculate some aggregates, then do calculations on the aggregates. Like creating percentage markers for sums of numbers, from multiple groups.

Searching and filtering free text data can be a problem due to human error. Typos, transposed characters and even data entry into the wrong field present a challenge when trying to report on the data. In a SQL query we can use LIKE and wildcards to try to work around these issues.

We recently undertook a project for a customer where we reviewed the top X reports (in terms of usage as logged in SSRS) for performance optimization. Some of their heavy hitters were tying up a lot of DR resources, and slowing things down for everyone.

Because SourceID is part of the primary key in virtually all MEDITECH Data Repository tables, it is good practice to include SourceID as the first column all indexes, include it in all joins and to identify SourceID in the WHERE clause of the query. In most cases this will cause SQL Server to use an index seek instead of an index scan and greatly improve performance.

From time to time in your work in SQL from the DR, you’ll wind up CAST-ing or CONVERT-ing a number into a string. If that number starts as a DECIMAL or NUMERIC with a scale (the number of places of accuracy to the right of the decimal point) then you will wind up with something like this:

• Ever change the logic in your query, confirm new data in SQL, run the report from SSRS… and get the old data?

• Ever change the columns in your query, run the report from SSRS… and get a weird error – or just not get any data in the new column in the report, but you can see it in SQL?

• Even if you click the Refresh button????

Despite all our best efforts, occasionally – rarely – perhaps inconceivably – there are problems with reports or extracts we create for our end users.

Recently while working a regulatory report I found myself faced with needing to identify the first (or earliest) of a set of dates. Each date came from a different possible order related to the patient visit, and I needed to chunk through 10 different JOIN-ed tables and get the one with the first / earliest date.

When we’re working on other people’s code – for troubleshooting or optimization purposes – we see a fair amount of usage of the ISNULL() function. Generally speaking we replace those ISNULL() references with COALESCE().

But why?