You Can't Do That with UDF's

User defined functions are useful, but sometimes promise more than they can deliver. Just like Clint, a UDF has to know it's limitations, and so do you. Andy Novick does a great job of showing you live the limitations of user defined functions (and visit his profile to see many other great function focused videos).

Andrew Novick is a SQL Server consultant building business solutions with the Microsoft tools. His expertise in database design, T-SQL coding, SQL Server security, database performance tuning, and database partitioning can be a valuable asset to many projects. Andrew Novick also offers training and mentoring services to relevant projects. His writing on computing can be seen at his web site ht...

chapas on 2/9/2009

Functions is a nutshell of 3 minutes. Great!

kin on 2/9/2009

that's a 3 min well spent. It would have taken me 3 days banging my head to the wall finding out the limitations.

Ed Svastits on 2/9/2009

Good examples.

Kenneth Wymore on 2/9/2009

Good presentation of information without excess explanations.

E20CF1E7B8 on 2/9/2009

Interesting, but not terribly useful.

ML Stephens on 2/9/2009

I will going to your web site---article is very informative

borjonx on 2/9/2009

excellent speaker - very clear & concise.

Tim Mitchell on 2/11/2009

Good coverage of some of the limitations of UDFs. Many people find out these things only through trial and error.

Chris Helm on 2/13/2009

in a nutshell! Excellent stuff, as said earlier most of us find these out by trial and error which wastes valuable time.

Martin S. Stoller on 2/14/2009

Nice and quick on UDF restrictions! Small trick for those (still?!) having to use SQL 2000 - create a view that simply does "select getdate()"... You can now select on that view in the UDF (yes, ugly, but there are possibly times you need such workarounds...)

Christian Bahnsen on 5/20/2009

these UDF videos are great

Caleb Bell on 7/16/2009

A bit of explanation as to why these decisions were made would be helpful for understanding / remembering the restrictions.

JohnG on 10/29/2009

SQL Svr 2008 - Need to mention the usage of RAND and NEWID

yashpal on 7/12/2011

short and sweet

Che Hsu on 7/13/2011

What are all of these limitations for?

Mark Horninger on 7/13/2011

Lots of good info about UDF's. This can save you alot of headaches if you're not aware of what you can't do in a udf.

George Heinrich on 7/13/2011

nice and very interesting summary that would be hard to come across unless performing extensive work on UDFs! Thanks for compiling them here.

Joe DeMarco on 7/13/2011

So what can you do?

3D2955A2F8 on 7/13/2011

Very informative! Thank you!

dfortier on 7/13/2011

.

MInxia on 7/13/2011

helpful

James Moore on 7/13/2011

Great review of UDF limitations. Thanks!

Rich on 7/13/2011

Thanks, didn't know about TRY..CATCH being ineligible.

995751D667 on 7/13/2011

Very informative

revanth on 7/13/2011

excelelnt

ranga rao on 7/13/2011

Very good information. Did not use the features, but good to know.

Yuri on 7/13/2011

Thanks, very useful

Eric Conway on 7/19/2011

Video did not complete. Stopped while compiling dbo.udf_execues_sp.

David Overall on 12/9/2011

Thanks for the overview of Function's limitations

A Alagu Ganesh on 3/30/2012

good