https://www.red-gate.

com/simple-talk/sql/t-sql-programming/sql-server-
functions-the-basics/

SQL Server Functions: The Basics

SQL Server's functions are a valuable addition to TSQL when used wisely. Jeremiah
provides a complete and comprehensive guide to scalar functions and table-valued
functions, and shows how and where they are best used.

A function, in any programming environment, lets you encapsulate reusable logic and
build software that is “composable”, i.e. built of pieces that can be reused and put
together in a number of different ways to meet the needs of the users. Functions hide
the steps and the complexity from other code.

However, in certain respects, SQL Server’s functions are fundamentally different from
functions in other programming environments. In procedural programming, the piece of
functionality that most programmers call a function should really be called a
subroutine, which is more like a miniature program. These subroutines can go about
changing data, introducing side effects, and generally misbehaving as much as they like.

In SQL Server, functions adhere much more closely to their mathematic definition of
mapping a set of inputs to a set of outputs. SQL Server’s functions accept parameters,
perform some sort of action, and return a result. They do all of this with no side effects.
Nevertheless, in the same way as subroutines, SQL Server functions can hide
complexity from users and turn a complex piece of code into a re-usable commodity.
Functions make it possible, for example, to create very complex search conditions that
would be difficult and tedious to express in inline T-SQL.

This article describes:

 The types of user-defined functions (UDFs) that SQL Server supports, both scalar (which
return a single value) and table-valued (which return a table), and how to use them.
 Some of the more interesting built-in functions
 How and why functions can get you into trouble, and cause terrible performance, if you’re
not careful about how you use them.
Fun Facts about Functions
This section describes, briefly, some of the basic characteristics of the various types of
SQL Server function, which we’ll explore in more detail as we progress through the later
examples.

As noted in the introduction, all SQL Server functions adhere closely to the mathematic
definition of a function i.e. a mapping of inputs to outputs, without have side effects. A
function with inputs x and y cannot both return x + y and modify the original value of y.
As a matter of fact, that function couldn’t even modify y: it is only able to return a new
value.

Where Can I Use A Function?

Anywhere!

Well, we can use a function almost anywhere that we would use a table or column. We
can use a function anywhere that we can use a scalar value or a table. Functions can be
used in constraints, computed columns, joins, WHERE clauses, or even in other functions.
Functions are an incredibly powerful part of SQL Server.

Functions can be Scalar or Table-valued

Scalar functions return a single value. It doesn’t matter what type it is, as long as it’s
only a single, value rather than a table value. You can use a scalar function “anywhere
that a scalar expression of the same data type is allowed in T-SQL statements” (quote
from Books Online). All data types in SQL Server are scalar data types, with the
exception of TEXT, NTEXT, ROWVERSION, and IMAGE. Unless you are working with SQL
Server 2000, you should be avoiding the TEXT, NTEXT, and IMAGE data types; they are
deprecated and will be removed in a future version of SQL Server.

In addition to user-defined scalar functions, SQL Server provides numerous types of

built-in scalar functions, some of which we’ll cover in more detail later. For example,
there are several built-in date functions, such as GETDATE, string functions, such as
SUBSTRING, and so on, all of which act on a single value and return a single value. There
are also aggregate functions that perform a calculation on a set of values and return a
single value, as well as a few ranking functions that produce one row for each input row.

Table-valued functions (TVFs) return a table instead of a single value. A table valued
function can be used anywhere a table can be used – typically in the FROM clause of a
query. TVFs make it possible to encapsulate complex logic in a query. For example,
security permissions, calculations, and business logic can be embedded in a TVF. Careful
use of TVFs makes it easy to create re-usable code frameworks in the database.

One of the important differences between scalar functions and TVFs is the way in which
they can be handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer.

Most developers will be used to working with compilers that will “inline” trivial function
calls. In other words, in any place where the function is called, the compiler will
automatically incorporate the whole body of the function into the surrounding code. The
alternative is that a function is treated as interpreted code, and invoking it from the
main body of code requires a jump to a different code block to execute the function.
The biggest drawback of SQL Server functions is that they may not be automatically
inlined. For a scalar function that operates on multiple rows, SQL Server will execute the
function once for every row in the result set. This can have a huge performance impact,
as will be demonstrated later in the article. Fortunately, with TVFs, SQL Server will call
them only once, regardless of the number of rows in the result set and it’s often
possible, with a bit of ingenuity, to rewrite scalar functions into TVFs, and so avoid the
row-by-row processing that is inherent with scalar functions.

In some cases, it might be necessary to dispense with the TVF altogether, and simply
“manually inline” the function logic into the main code. Of course this defeats the
purpose of creating a function to encapsulate re-usable logic.

Functions can be Deterministic or Nondeterministic

A deterministic function will return the same result when it is called with the same set of
input parameters. Adding two numbers together is an example of a deterministic
function.

A nondeterministic function, on the other hand, may return different results every time
they are called with the same set of input values. Even if the state of the data in the
database is the same, the results of the function might be different. The GETDATE
function, for example, is nondeterministic. One caveat of almost all nondeterministic
functions is that they are executed once per statement, not once per row. If you query
90,000 rows of data and use the RAND function to attempt to produce a random value
for each row you will be disappointed; SQL Server will only generate a single random
number for the entire statement. The only exception to this rule is NEWID, which will
generate a new GUID for every row in the statement.

When we create a function, SQL Server will analyze the code we’ve created and evaluate
whether the function is deterministic. If our function makes calls to any
nondeterministic functions, it will, itself, be marked as nondeterministic. SQL Server
relies on the author of a SQL CLR function to declare the function as deterministic using
an attribute.

Deterministic functions can be used in indexed views and computed columns whereas
nondeterministic functions cannot.

Keeping things safe: functions can be schema-bound

Functions, just like views, can be schema bound. Attempts to alter objects that are
referenced by a schema bound function will fail. What does this buy us, though? Well,
just as when schema binding a view, schema binding a function makes it more difficult
to make changes to the underlying data structures that would break our functions.
To create a schema-bound function we simply specify schema binding as an option
during function creation, as shown in Listing 1.

CREATE FUNCTION Sales.CalculateSalesOrderTotal (@SalesOrderID INT)

RETURNS MONEY
WITH SCHEMABINDING AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @SalesOrderTotal AS MONEY ;
SELECT @SalesOrderTotal =
SUM(sod.LineTotal)
+ soh.TaxAmt
+ soh.Freight
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh
INNER JOIN Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sod
ON soh.SalesOrderID = sod.SalesOrderID
WHERE soh.SalesOrderID = @SalesOrderId
GROUP BY soh.TaxAmt, soh.Freight ;
RETURN @SalesOrderTotal ;
END;
GO

Listing 1: Creating a Schema Bound Function

Behavior around NULL

We can bind a function to our database schema, thereby preventing database

changes breaking our function, but what do we do when our function receives NULL
input values? By default, SQL Server will go ahead and run the code in the function and
evaluate all of the parameters passed in, even if one of those parameters is a NULL
value, and so the output of the function is NULL.

This is a waste of processor cycles and we need to avoid this unnecessary work. We
could check every parameter that is passed into a function, but that is a lot of code to
maintain. If you’re thinking, “there has to be a better way” then you’re absolutely right.
When we create the function we can use the RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT option, which
will cause SQL Server to immediately return NULL if any parameters in the function are
NULL-valued. Users of SQL Server 2000 and earlier are out of luck, though, as this
feature was introduced in SQL Server 2005.
Scalar User-defined Functions
It’s time to take a look at some interesting uses for scalar UDFs, and along the way
elucidate the rules that govern how we create and call them.

Calling Scalar UDFs

There are a few rules that must be followed when creating a function:

 The body of the function must be enclosed in a BEGIN/END block.

 Statements with side effects (insert/update/delete) and temporary tables may not be
used. You can, however, use table variables. Table variables are allowed in UDFs because
they are created as variables, not through DDL. DDL is viewed as producing a side effect
and is not allowed.
 TRY/CATCH statements are not allowed since CATCH can have the side effect of masking
the error state of a given function.

Let’s dive straight in and take a look at Listing 2, which shows the code to create, in the
AdventureWorks2008 database, a scalar UDF called ProductCostDifference, which will compute
the cost difference for a single product, over a time range.

IF OBJECT_ID(N'Production.ProductCostDifference', N'FN') IS NOT NULL

DROP FUNCTION Production.ProductCostDifference ;
GO

CREATE FUNCTION Production.ProductCostDifference

( @ProductId INT , @StartDate DATETIME , @EndDate DATETIME)
RETURNS MONEY
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @StartingCost AS MONEY ;
DECLARE @CostDifference AS MONEY ;

SELECT TOP 1
@StartingCost = pch.StandardCost
FROM Production.ProductCostHistory AS pch
WHERE pch.ProductID = @ProductId
AND EndDate BETWEEN @StartDate
AND @EndDate
ORDER BY StartDate ASC ;

SELECT TOP 1
@CostDifference = StandardCost - @StartingCost
FROM Production.ProductCostHistory AS pch
WHERE pch.ProductID = @ProductId
AND EndDate BETWEEN @StartDate
AND @EndDate
ORDER BY StartDate DESC ;

RETURN @CostDifference ;
END
Listing 2: Creating a scalar function

Likewise, when we call a UDF, we must follow a few rules:

 quality the function name (e.g. Production.ProductCostDifference) when using a function in

a query.
 Optional parameters cannot be omitted, but we can use the DEFAULT keyword to supply
the default value.

Listing 3 shows a simple call to our ProductCostDifference function.

SELECT Production.ProductCostDifference(707, '1999-01-01', GETDATE()) ;

/* column1
----------
1.8504 */

Listing 3: Executing a user-defined function

Scalar UDFs are a fairly straightforward feature but there are some drawbacks to them,
the biggest one being that, as discussed earlier, SQL Server has no optimization
whereby it can compile this function as inline code. Therefore, it will simply call it once
for every row to be returned in the result set. Another drawback of scalar UDFs is that
we won’t see the true cost of the function when we’re looking at execution plans. This
makes it difficult to gauge just how much a UDF is hurting query performance.

Scalar functions in the SELECT Clause

Listing 4 demonstrates calling our function in the SELECT statement of two simple
queries, the only difference being that in the second query we filter out NULL results
from our scalar function.

--QUERY 1
SELECT ProductID ,
Name AS ProductName ,
Production.ProductCostDifference
(ProductID, '2000-01-01', GETDATE())
AS CostVariance
FROM Production.Product ;

--QUERY 2
SELECT ProductID ,
Name AS ProductName ,
Production.ProductCostDifference
(ProductID, '2000-01-01', GETDATE())
AS CostVariance
FROM Production.Product
WHERE Production.ProductCostDifference
(ProductID, '2000-01-01', GETDATE())
IS NOT NULL ;

Listing 4: Running a query with a scalar function

Unfortunately, SQL Server is not terribly intelligent in the way that it works with scalar
functions. In the first query, our ProductCostDifference function will be executed once for
each of the 504 rows in the Production.Product table. This leads to an increase in disk
access, CPU utilization, and memory utilization. The execution plan for this query is
shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Execution Plan for Query 1 in Listing 4

We can see that all data is read from disk in the Index Scan operator before being sent
to the Compute Scalar operator, where our function is applied to the data. If we open up
the Properties page for the Compute Scalar node (pressing F4 will do this if you haven’t
changed the default SQL Server Management Studio settings) and examine the Define
Values property list. If this references the function name (rather than the column
name), as it will in this case, then the function is being called once per row.

The situation is even worse for the second query in Listing 4 in that the function needs
to be evaluated twice: once for every 504 rows in the Production.Product table and once
again for the 157 rows that produce a non-NULL result from our scalar function. The
execution plan for this query is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Execution Plan for Query 2 in Listing 4

Again, we can establish whether or not a function is being executed once per row by
examining the details of this plan; in this case, the properties of either the Compute
Scalar or the Filter node. The Predicate property of the Filter node shows that that the
filter operation is filtering on:

[AdventureWorksCS].[Production].[ProductCostVariance]([AdventureWorksCS].[Production].[Pr
oduct].[ProductID],'2000-01-01 00:00:00.000',getdate()) IS NOT NULL.

In other words, SQL Server is evaluating the function once for every row in the product
table. No function ‘inlining’ has been performed; we would be able to see the ‘inlined’
source code if it had been.

This may seem like a trivial point to labor over, but it can have far reaching performance
implications. Imagine that you have a plot of land. On one side of your plot of land is a
box of nails. How long would it take you to do anything if you only used one nail at a
time and kept returning to the box of nails every time you needed to use another one?

This sort of thing might not be bad for small tasks like hanging a picture on the wall, but
it would become incredibly time consuming if you were trying to build an addition for
 your house. The same thing is happening within your T-SQL. During query evaluation,
SQL Server must evaluate the output of the scalar function once per row. This could
require additional disk access and potentially slow down the query.

Scalar functions, when used appropriately, can be incredibly effective. Just be careful to
evaluate their use on datasets similar to the ones you will see in production before you
make the decision to use them; they have some characteristics that may cause
undesirable side effects. If your scalar UDF needs to work on many rows, one solution is
to rewrite it as a table-valued function, as will be demonstrated a little later.

Scalar functions in the WHERE Clause

Using a scalar function in the WHERE clause can also have disastrous effects on
performance. Although the symptoms are the same (row-by-row execution), the cause
is different. Consider the call to the built-in scalar function, DATEADD, in Listing 5.

SELECT *
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh
WHERE DATEADD(mm, 12, soh.OrderDate) < GETDATE()

Listing 5: Poor use of a function in the WHERE clause

This code will result in a full scan of the Sales.SalesOrderHeader table because SQL Server
can’t use any index on the OrderDate column. Instead, SQL Server has to scan every row
in the table and apply the function to each row. A better, more efficient way to write this
particular query would be to move the function, as shown in Listing 6.

SELECT *
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh
WHERE soh.OrderDate < DATEADD(mm, -12, GETDATE())

Listing 6: Better use of a function in the WHERE clause

Optimizing the use of a function in the WHERE clause isn’t always that easy, but in many
occasions this problem can be alleviated through the use of careful design, a computed
column, or a view.

Constraints and Scalar Functions

Functions can be used for more than just simplifying math; they are also a useful means
by which to encapsulate and enforce rules within the data.

Default Values

Functions can be used to supply the default value for a column in a table. There is one
requirement: no column from the table can be used as an input parameter to the default
constraint. In Listing 7, we create two tables, Bins and Products, and a user defined
function, FirstUnusedProductBin, which will find the first unused bin with the fewest
products. We then use the output of the FirstUnusedProductBin function as a default value
for the BinID in the Products table. Creating this default value makes it possible to have a
default storage location for products, which can be overridden by application code, if
necessary.
IF OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Products', N'U') IS NOT NULL
DROP TABLE dbo.Products ;
GO

IF OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.FirstUnusedProductBin', N'FN') IS NOT NULL

DROP FUNCTION dbo.FirstUnusedProductBin ;
GO

IF OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Bins', N'U') IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE dbo.Bins ;
GO

CREATE TABLE dbo.Bins

( BinID INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY ,
Shelf VARCHAR(2) NOT NULL ,
Bin TINYINT NOT NULL ) ;

CREATE TABLE dbo.Products

( ProductID INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY ,
ProductName VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL ,
BinID INT REFERENCES dbo.Bins ( BinID )
) ;
GO
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.FirstUnusedProductBin ( )
RETURNS INT
AS
BEGIN
RETURN (SELECT x.BinID
FROM (SELECT b.BinID ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER
(ORDER BY COUNT(p.ProductID))
AS rn
FROM dbo.Bins AS b
LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Products AS p
ON b.BinID = p.BinID
GROUP BY b.BinID
) AS x
WHERE rn = 1
) ;

END
GO

ALTER TABLE dbo.Products ADD CONSTRAINT DF_Products_BinID

DEFAULT dbo.FirstUnusedProductBin() FOR BinID ;

Listing 7: Creating a table with a UDF default

Our UDF will only work for single row INSERTs. We’ll explore what happens with a set-
based INSERT after we look at the function working correctly with single row INSERTs.

INSERT INTO dbo.Bins (Shelf, Bin)

VALUES ('A', 1),
('A', 2),
('B', 1),
('B', 2),
('B', 3);

INSERT INTO dbo.Products

( ProductName, BinID )
VALUES ( 'widget', DEFAULT ),
( 'sprocket', DEFAULT ),
( 'hammer', DEFAULT ),
( 'flange', DEFAULT ),
( 'gasket', DEFAULT ) ;
GO

-- every bin is full

SELECT *
FROM dbo.Products ;

DELETE FROM dbo.Products

WHERE ProductName = 'hammer' ;

-- bin 3 is empty
SELECT *
FROM dbo.Products ;

INSERT INTO dbo.Products

( ProductName, BinID )
VALUES ( 'plunger', DEFAULT );

-- every bin is full again

SELECT *
FROM dbo.Products ;

Listing 8: Modifying data in the Products table

When we insert data into the Products table in the first statement it’s very easy to see
that every bin is filled. If we remove one product and add a different product, the empty
bin will be re-used.

Although this example demonstrates nicely the way in which we can use functions to set
default values, the implementation of this function is naïve; once all bins are full it will
circle around and begin adding products to the least full bin. An ideal function would use
a bin-packing algorithm. If you need to use a bin-packing algorithm in T-SQL, I
recommend looking at Chapter 4: Set-based iteration in SQL Server MVP Deep
Dives (Kornelis 2009).
What happens if we try to INSERT more than one row at a time?

INSERT INTO dbo.Products

( ProductName
)
SELECT Name
FROM Production.Product ;

SELECT *
FROM dbo.Products ;

Listing 9: Inserting many rows at once

Every row is inserted with the same default value. The FirstUnusedProductBin function is
only called once for the entire transaction. A better way to enforce a default value that
works for both single-row INSERTs and multi-row INSERTs is to use an INSTEAD OF trigger
to bypass the set-based INSERT. In effect, we have to force SQL Server to use row-by-
row behavior in order to insert a new value in each row.

ALTER TABLE dbo.Bins DROP CONSTRAINT DF_Products_BinID ;

GO

TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.Products ;

GO

DROP TRIGGER TR_Products$Insert ;

GO

CREATE TRIGGER TR_Products$Insert ON dbo.Products

INSTEAD OF INSERT
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @count INT ;
DECLARE @counter INT ;

SELECT @count = COUNT(*) ,

@counter = 0
FROM inserted ;

SELECT * ,
-- We use a trick with ROW_NUMBER to produce
-- an abitrary, ever increasing row number
-- that is not based on any characteristic of
-- the underlying data.
ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( ORDER BY ( SELECT 1)) AS TriggerRowNumber
INTO #inserted
FROM inserted ;
 WHILE @counter < @count
BEGIN
INSERT INTO dbo.Products
( ProductName ,
BinID
)
SELECT ProductName ,
dbo.FirstUnusedProductBin()
FROM #inserted
WHERE TriggerRowNumber = @counter + 1 ;
SET @counter = @counter + 1 ;
END
END

INSERT INTO dbo.Products

( ProductName
)
SELECT Name
FROM Production.Product ;

SELECT *
FROM dbo.Products ;

Listing 10: A Multi-row solution

To provide a constantly changing default value for each row we’ve removed the default
constraint and replaced it with an INSTEAD OF trigger for the INSERT. Unfortunately, this
trigger adds significant overhead, but it does demonstrate the difficulty of using
functions to enforce complex default constraints.

Enforcing Constraints with Functions

Scalar UDFs are often very useful for data validation and restriction. Many constraints
enforce simple, inline evaluations, such as the “number of federal income tax deductions
must be less than ten”). For example, the CHECK constraint in Listing 11 enforces the
rule that no employee’s yearly bonus is more than 25% of their salary (one could argue
that this sort of salary logic belongs in the application not database, but that debate is
not really relevant to our goal here).

CREATE TABLE dbo.Salaries

(
EmployeeID INT NOT NULL ,
BaseSalary MONEY NOT NULL ,
Bonus MONEY NULL
) ;

ALTER TABLE dbo.Salaries

ADD CONSTRAINT CheckMaxBonus
CHECK ((COALESCE(Bonus, 0) * 4) <= BaseSalary) ;

Listing 11: A simple CHECK constraint

Say, though that we have second rule for this data says that “no employee may have a
salary that is 10 times greater than the salary of the lowest paid employee”. This is a bit
trickier because if we try to add a subquery to the CHECK constraint, we receive an error
that “Subqueries are not allowed in this context. Only scalar expressions are allowed.”
SQL server is, wisely, preventing us from comparing the output of a query with a single
value. Since we cannot put this comparison inline, we’ll have to create a scalar UDF and
use the function to compare the data.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SalaryWithinBounds ( @Salary MONEY )

RETURNS BIT
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @r_val AS BIT ;
DECLARE @MinSalary AS MONEY ;

SELECT @MinSalary = MIN(BaseSalary)

FROM dbo.Salaries

IF ( @MinSalary * 10 ) > @Salary

SET @r_val = 1
ELSE
SET @r_val = 0

RETURN @r_val ;
END
GO

ALTER TABLE dbo.Salaries

ADD CONSTRAINT CheckMaxSalary
CHECK (dbo.SalaryWithinBounds(BaseSalary) = 1) ;
GO

/* This insert succeeds */

INSERT INTO dbo.Salaries
( EmployeeID, BaseSalary, Bonus )
VALUES ( 5, 1000, 0 ) ;
/* This insert will fail */
INSERT INTO dbo.Salaries
( EmployeeID, BaseSalary, Bonus )
VALUES ( 6, 100000000, 50000 ) ;

Listing 12: Creating a constraint with a function

Functions in constraints are not limited to the current table; they can reference any
table in the database to enforce data constraints. In the following example we will
create two tables – Employees and PayGrades – and implement a CHECK constraint that
prevents an employee from having the same or higher pay grade as their manager.
IF OBJECT_ID(N'Employees', N'U') IS NOT NULL
DROP TABLE dbo.Employees ;
GO

IF OBJECT_ID(N'PayGrades', N'U') IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE dbo.PayGrades ;
GO

IF OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.VerifyPayGrade', N'FN') IS NOT NULL

DROP FUNCTION dbo.VerifyPayGrade ;
GO

CREATE TABLE dbo.PayGrades

(
PayGradeCode CHAR(1) NOT NULL
PRIMARY KEY ,
Position TINYINT NOT NULL
) ;
GO

CREATE TABLE dbo.Employees

(
EmployeeID INT NOT NULL
IDENTITY(1, 1)
PRIMARY KEY ,
ManagerID INT NULL
REFERENCES dbo.Employees ( EmployeeID ) ,
PayGradeCode CHAR(1) NOT NULL
REFERENCES dbo.PayGrades ( PayGradeCode ) ,
FirstName VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL ,
LastName VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL
) ;
GO
 CREATE FUNCTION dbo.VerifyPayGrade
( @ManagerID INT ,
@PayGrade CHAR(1)
)
RETURNS BIT
BEGIN
DECLARE @r AS BIT ,
@ManagerPayGradePosition AS TINYINT ,
@PayGradePosition AS TINYINT ;

SET @r = 0 ;
SELECT @ManagerPayGradePosition = Position
FROM dbo.Employees AS e
INNER JOIN dbo.PayGrades AS pg
ON e.PayGradeCode = pg.PayGradeCode
WHERE e.EmployeeID = @ManagerID ;

SELECT @PayGradePosition = Position

FROM dbo.PayGrades AS pg
WHERE pg.PayGradeCode = @PayGrade ;

SET @r = CASE WHEN @PayGradePosition <

COALESCE(@ManagerPayGradePosition,
999) THEN 1
ELSE 0
END ;
RETURN @r ;
END
GO

ALTER TABLE dbo.Employees

WITH CHECK
ADD
CONSTRAINT CK_Employees_PayGradePosition
CHECK (dbo.VerifyPayGrade(ManagerID, PayGradeCode) = 1) ;
GO

INSERT INTO dbo.PayGrades

( PayGradeCode, Position )
VALUES ( 'A', 10 ),
( 'B', 9 ),
( 'C', 8 ),
( 'D', 7 ),
( 'E', 6 ),
( 'F', 5 ),
( 'G', 4 ),
( 'H', 3 ),
( 'I', 2 ),
( 'J', 1 ) ;

Listing 13: A constraint using functions that access other tables

 Having now created our tables and a function to validate the business rule, we can set
about testing that our rules actually work.

-- These inserts will succeed

INSERT INTO dbo.Employees
( ManagerID, PayGradeCode, FirstName, LastName )
VALUES ( NULL, 'A', 'Kim', 'Abercrombie' ),
( 1, 'B', 'Theodore', 'Stevens' ) ;
GO

-- This insert will fail

INSERT INTO dbo.Employees
( ManagerID ,
PayGradeCode ,
FirstName ,
LastName
)
VALUES ( 2 ,
'B' ,
'James' ,
'Nguyen'
) ;

Listing 14: Verifying our constraints by creating data

The first two inserted rows create the head of the company at the top pay grade and
then we create an immediate subordinate. The third INSERT fails because we’re
attempting to create an employee at the same pay grade as their manager. When we
try to insert a row that violates the check constraint, an error is returned to the client.
We could parse this error message and return a meaningful message to the client
instead of this:

The INSERT statement conflicted with the CHECK constraint

"CK_Employees_PayGradePosition". The conflict occurred in database
"AdventureWorks2008", table "dbo.Employees".
Table-valued Functions
Table-valued Functions (TVFs) differ from scalar functions in that TVFs return an entire
table whereas scalar functions only return a single value. This makes them ideal for
encapsulating more complex logic or functionality for easy re-use. TVFs have the
additional advantage of being executed once to return a large number of rows (as
opposed to scalar functions which must be executed many times to return many
values).

The body of a TVF can either contain just a single statement or multiple statements, but
the two cases are handled very differently by the optimizer. If the function body
contains just a single statement (often referred to as an “inline TVF”), then the
optimizer treats it in a similar fashion to a view in that it will “decompose” it and simply
reference the underlying objects (there will be no reference to the function in the
resulting execution plan).

However, by contrast, multi-statement TVFs present an optimization problem for SQL

Server; it doesn’t know what to do with them. It treats them rather like a table for
which it has no available statistics – the optimizer assumes that it the TVF will always
return one row. As a result, even a very simple multi-statement TVF can cause severe
performance problems.

Avoiding Row-by-Row Behavior with TVFs

One of the problems with scalar functions is that they are executed once for every row
in the result set. While this is not a problem for small result sets, it becomes a problem
when our queries return a large number of rows. We can use TVFs to solve this problem.

We’ll start with a relatively simple case of converting a single-statement scalar function
into a single-statement TVF. We’ll then move on to the slightly more complex case of
converting our previous ProductCostDifference scalar function (Listing 2), which contains
multiple statements. As we discussed earlier, this function can only operate on a single
row at a time. If we wanted to execute that function over several million rows, we would
see a considerable spike in disk I/O and a decrease in performance.

Single-statement Scalar to Single-statement TVF

Let’s take a look at a new example, looking at order data from the AdventureWorks
database. We are specifically interested in the average weight of orders so we can
determine if we need to look into different shipping options.

Listing 15 creates two functions; the first is a scalar function and will compute the order
weight for any single order. This is ideal for queries showing the details of a single order
or a few orders, but when it comes to working with a large number of orders this could
cause an incredible amount of disk I/O.
The second function is a single-statement table-valued function that performs the exact
same calculation, but does so over an entire table instead of for a single row.

IF OBJECT_ID(N'Sales.OrderWeight') IS NOT NULL

DROP FUNCTION Sales.OrderWeight ;
GO

IF OBJECT_ID(N'Sales.tvf_OrderWeight') IS NOT NULL

DROP FUNCTION Sales.tvf_OrderWeight ;
GO

CREATE FUNCTION Sales.OrderWeight ( @SalesOrderID INT )

RETURNS DECIMAL(18, 2)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Weight AS DECIMAL(18, 2) ;

SELECT @Weight = SUM(sod.OrderQty * p.Weight)

FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sod
INNER JOIN Production.Product AS p
ON sod.ProductID = p.ProductID
WHERE sod.SalesOrderID = @SalesOrderID ;

RETURN @Weight ;
END
GO

CREATE FUNCTION Sales.tvf_OrderWeight ( )

RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
SELECT sod.SalesOrderID ,
SUM(sod.OrderQty * p.Weight) AS OrderWeight
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sod
INNER JOIN Production.Product AS p
ON sod.ProductID = p.ProductID
GROUP BY sod.SalesOrderID ;
GO

Listing 15: Two functions for Finding Order Weight

Listing 16 shows the queries for calling each of these functions.

--calling the scalar function

SELECT c.CustomerID ,
AVG(OrderWeight) AS AverageOrderWeight
FROM Sales.Customer AS c
INNER JOIN ( SELECT soh.CustomerID ,
Sales.OrderWeight(soh.SalesOrderID)
AS OrderWeight
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh
WHERE soh.OrderDate BETWEEN '2000-01-01'
AND GETDATE()
) AS x ON c.CustomerID = x.CustomerID
GROUP BY c.CustomerID
ORDER BY c.CustomerID ;

-- calling the single-statement TVF

SELECT c.CustomerID ,
AVG(OrderWeight) AS AverageOrderWeight
FROM Sales.Customer AS c
INNER JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh
ON c.CustomerID = soh.CustomerID
INNER JOIN Sales.tvf_OrderWeight() AS y
ON soh.SalesOrderID = y.SalesOrderID
GROUP BY c.CustomerID
ORDER BY c.CustomerID ;

Listing 16: Using the OrderWeight Functions

Notice the different ways in which the two functions are invoked. We use our single-
statement TVF the same way that we would use a table. This makes it very easy to use
TVFs in our queries; we only need to join to them and their results will be incorporated
into our existing query.

When you hit the Execute button for those queries, it should be immediately clear that
one of them, at least, is pretty slow. However, by examining the execution plans alone,
as shown in Figure 6, it’s hard to tell which one is the culprit.
In fact, in terms of relative plan cost, you may even conclude that the first plan is less
expensive.

Figure 3: Execution plans for calling the scar function and the TVF

Unfortunately, the top execution plan (for the scalar function), hides any immediately-
obvious evidence of the Sales.OrderWeight function reading row-by-row through the
Sales.SalesOrderDetail table. Our evidence for that comes, again, from the Compute Scalar
operator, where we see direct reference to our Sales.OrderWeight function, indicating that
it is being called once per row.

In the second execution plan, for the TVF, we see the index scan against the
Sales.SalesOrderDetail table. Our TVF is called just once to return the required rows, and
has effectively been “inlined”; the plan references only the underlying objects with no
reference to the function itself.

Using SET STATISTICS TIME ON revealed that (one my machine) the first query executes in
28 seconds while the second query executes in 0.6 seconds. Clearly the second query is
faster than the first.

Later in the article, we’ll take this a step further and show how to dispense with the TVF
altogether and manually inline the logic of this TVF; a strategy that’s sometimes
advantageous from a performance perspective.

Multi-statement Scalar to Multi-statement TVF

Let’s now look at the more complex case of converting our multi-statement
ProductCostDifference scalar function into a TVF. We’re going to start with a straight
conversion to a multi-statement TVF.
As noted, a multi-statement TVF is one that contains more than one statement in the
function body. Listing 17 shows a nearly-direct translation of the original scalar function,
in Listing 2, into a multi-statement table-valued function.

IF OBJECT_ID(N'Production.ms_tvf_ProductCostDifference',N'TF' ) IS NOT NULL

--SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE name LIKE 'm%'

DROP FUNCTION Production.ms_tvf_ProductCostDifference ;
GO

CREATE FUNCTION Production.ms_tvf_ProductCostDifference

(
@StartDate DATETIME ,
@EndDate DATETIME
)
RETURNS @retCostDifference TABLE
(
ProductId INT ,
CostDifference MONEY
)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @workTable TABLE
(
ProductId INT ,
StartingCost MONEY ,
EndingCost MONEY
) ;

INSERT INTO @retCostDifference

( ProductId ,
CostDifference
)
SELECT ProductID ,
StandardCost
FROM ( SELECT pch.ProductID ,
pch.StandardCost ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER
( PARTITION BY ProductID
ORDER BY StartDate DESC ) AS rn
FROM Production.ProductCostHistory AS pch
WHERE EndDate BETWEEN
@StartDate AND @EndDate
) AS x
WHERE x.rn = 1 ;
 UPDATE @retCostDifference
SET CostDifference = CostDifference - StandardCost
FROM @retCostDifference cd
JOIN ( SELECT ProductID ,
StandardCost
FROM ( SELECT pch.ProductID ,
pch.StandardCost ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER
( PARTITION BY ProductID
ORDER BY StartDate ASC )
AS rn
FROM Production.ProductCostHistory
AS pch
WHERE EndDate BETWEEN
@StartDate AND @EndDate
) AS x
WHERE x.rn = 1
) AS y ON cd.ProductId = y.ProductID ;

RETURN ;
END
GO

Listing 17: A multi-statement TVF

This TVF, Instead of retrieving a single row from the database and calculating the price
difference, pulls back all rows from the database and calculates the price difference for
all rows at once.

SELECT p.ProductID ,
p.Name ,
p.ProductNumber ,
pcd.CostDifference
FROM Production.Product AS p
INNER JOIN Production.ms_tvf_ProductCostDifference
('2001-01-01', GETDATE()) AS pcd
ON p.ProductID = pcd.ProductID ;

Listing 18: Using the TVF

The downside of this multi-statement TVF is that SQL Server makes the assumption that
only one row will be returned from the TVF, as we can see from the execution plan in
Figure 4. With the data volumes we see in AdventureWorks, this doesn’t pose many
problems.
On a larger production database, though, this would be especially problematic.

Figure 4: Only one row

Multi-statement Scalar to Single-statement TVF

Let’s now rewrite our original ProductCostDifference scalar function a second time, this time
turning it into a single-statement (or “inline”) TVF, as shown in Listing 19.

IF OBJECT_ID(N'Production.tvf_ProductCostDifference') IS NOT NULL

DROP FUNCTION Production.tvf_ProductCostDifference ;
GO

CREATE FUNCTION [Production].[tvf_ProductCostDifference]

(
@StartDate DATETIME ,
@EndDate DATETIME
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
WITH cte AS (
SELECT pch.ProductID ,
pch.StandardCost AS Cost ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( PARTITION BY pch.ProductID ORDER BY StartDate ASC )
AS rn_1 ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( PARTITION BY pch.ProductID ORDER BY StartDate DESC )
AS rn_2
FROM Production.ProductCostHistory AS pch
WHERE pch.EndDate BETWEEN @StartDate AND @EndDate
)
 -- Find the newest price for each product by using
-- grabbing the first (x.rn_1 = 1) row.
-- Then find the last row for each product with
-- x.rn_1 = y.rn_2. Since rn_2 is ordered by StartDate
-- descending, the row in y where rn_2 = 1 is the
-- oldest order.
SELECT x.ProductID ,
y.Cost - x.Cost AS CostDifference
FROM cte AS x
INNER JOIN cte AS y ON x.ProductID = y.ProductID
AND x.rn_1 = y.rn_2
WHERE x.rn_1 = 1 ;

Listing 19: Moving to a single-statement table-valued function

In addition to switching to a table valued function, we also re-wrote the code to read the
table fewer times (two times, in this case; once for each use of the CTE in Listing 19) by
using two different ROW_NUMBERs. Use of a common table expression also makes it
easier and faster to get the oldest and newest row at the same time.

While this initially seems like a lot of complexity to get to our original goal, it all has a
purpose. By re-writing the TVF to use a common table expression, we can avoid the
performance problem of a multi-statement TVF.

--QUERY 1
SELECT p.ProductID ,
p.Name ,
p.ProductNumber ,
pcd.CostDifference
FROM Production.Product AS p
INNER JOIN
Production.tvf_ProductCostDifference('2001-01-01',
GETDATE()) AS pcd
ON p.ProductID = pcd.ProductID ;

--QUERY 2
SELECT p.ProductID ,
p.Name ,
p.ProductNumber ,
pcd.CostDifference
FROM Production.Product AS p
INNER JOIN
Production.tvf_ProductCostDifference('2001-01-01',
GETDATE()) AS pcd
ON p.ProductID = pcd.ProductID
WHERE p.Name LIKE 'A%' ;

Listing 20: Two uses of the single-statement TVF

The execution plan for the first query in Listing 20 is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Execution Plan for Query 1 in Listing 20

We can see that the execution plan of the body of Production.tvf_ProductCostDifference has
been “inlined”. If the query had not been inlined, we would have just seen a single
operator for executing the table valued function. Note that there are two scans on
ProductCostHistory, because we call the CTE twice in the function, producing two reads of
the underlying query).

Again, we can confirm that this TVF is not executed once per row by examining, for
example, the Compute Scalar operator, which contains no reference to our function, as
well as the the Hash Match operator. If SQL Server had not inlined the function, we
might have seen a nested loop join to the TVF operator.Looking at the properties of the
Hash Match node, in Figure 6, we can see that SQL Server not only expects to perform
the join to the body of the TVF just once, but it does perform that join only once. SQL
Server has successfully inlined the TVF and it is called once for the entire result set, not
once for every row.

Figure 6: Properties of the Hash Match node

At this point, we’ve removed the problem we had with scalar functions, where they were
executed row-by-row. We’ve also avoided the problems inherent with multi-statement
TVFs. However, we still may encounter performance problems with these “inline” TVFs.
The reason for this is that the TVF may be evaluated in full before being joined to our
query. This means that we may see several hundred rows returned from the TVF when
our query only returns a few rows. In Listing 20, we have one query that returns 157
rows and a second query that returns only a single row. However, turning on STATISTICS
IO reveals that both queries perform the same amount of physical and logical IO,
showing that we’re doing the same amount of work whether we return 157 rows or 1
row. In both cases, we perform two scans of ProductCostHistory at a cost of 10 logical
reads.

(157 row(s) affected)

Table 'Product'. Scan count 0, logical reads 314, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0,
lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

Table 'Worktable'. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0,
lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

Table 'ProductCostHistory'. Scan count 2, logical reads 10, physical reads 0, read-ahead
reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

(1 row(s) affected)

(1 row(s) affected)

Table 'Product'. Scan count 0, logical reads 314, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0,
lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

Table 'Worktable'. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0,
lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

Table 'ProductCostHistory'. Scan count 2, logical reads 10, physical reads 0, read-ahead
reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

(1 row(s) affected)

When you are building your TVFs and the queries that use them, it’s important to
remember that the join path may not always be what you expect. You may come to a
point when you have been optimizing your queries and the performance bottleneck
comes down to a single table-valued function returning a lot of data that is subsequently
filtered down to a few rows. What should you do then?
Rewriting TVFs with CROSS APPLY

In cases where you have a substantial amount of data that you need to restrict through
joins and where conditions, it’s usually better from a performance perspective to
dispense with the TVF altogether and simply “manually inline” the function logic; in
other words, put the body of our T-SQL code inline with the calling code.

Inlining a TVF is as simple as pasting the body of the function into our query. This can
have several benefits. Firstly, it makes it much easier to determine if our changes are
improving performance. One of the problems of using functions is that multi-statement
TVFs do not report their actual disk I/O to STATISTICS IO, but they do when you use the
SQL Server Profiler. Single statement TVFs and inlined code will correctly report the disk
I/O because it’s just another part of the query.

Inlining TVF code also makes it easier to create one-off changes for a single query;
rather than create a new function, we can just change the code. When I start inlining
code in production I add a comment in the stored procedure that pointed back to the
original function. This makes it easier to incorporate any improvements that I may find
in the future. Finally, by moving our function to inline code it’s much more likely that
SQL Server will make effective join and table scanning choices and only retrieve the
rows that are needed. As discussed, with TVFs, SQL Server might execute the query in
our function first and return those rows to the outer query before applying any filtering.
If SQL Server returns 200,000 rows and only needs 100, that’s a considerable waste of
processing time and disk I/O. However, if SQL Server can immediately determine the
number of rows that will be needed and which rows will be needed, it will make much
more effective querying choices, including which indexes to use, the type of join to
consider, and the whether or not to perform a parallel operation.

Bear in mind, however, that SQL Server is in general, very efficient at inlining single-
statement TVFs. Listing 21 shows how to manually inline our Sales.tvf_OrderWeight TVF
(from Listing 15), by using CROSS APPLY. The CROSS APPLY operator effectively tells SQL
Server to invoke a table-valued function for each row returned by an outer query.

SELECT c.CustomerID ,
AVG(OrderWeight) AS AverageOrderWeight
FROM Sales.Customer AS c
INNER JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh ON c.CustomerID = soh.CustomerID
CROSS APPLY ( SELECT SUM(sod.OrderQty * p.Weight) AS OrderWeight
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sod
INNER JOIN Production.Product AS p ON sod.ProductID =
p.ProductID
WHERE sod.SalesOrderID = soh.SalesOrderID
GROUP BY sod.SalesOrderID ) AS y
GROUP BY c.CustomerID
ORDER BY c.CustomerID ;

Listing 21: Using CROSS APPLY to inline the OrderWeight TVF

However, we’ll see no difference in the execution plan compared to the one we saw from
calling the TVF (Figure 3). One of the benefits of using single statement TVFs is that SQL
Server is frequently able to optimize the queries and inline the TVF for us. By knowing
how to write optimal TVFs we can build reusable code and take advantage of SQL
Server’s ability to automatically inline well-constructed TVFs.

We can also manually inline the logic of our multi-statemnt TVFs. Listing 22 shows how
to do this for our tvf_ProductCostDifference function. However, again, we don’t get
additional benefit in this particular case. It turns out that attempting to inline the
common table expression has similar I/O implications to calling the function. Regardless
of whether we leave the TVF as-is or inline the function logic using just the CTE, SQL
Server will have to enter the CTE and evaluate the CTE query twice, once for each join
to the CTE, and we’ll see the same amount of physical I/O in each case.

SET STATISTICS IO ON ;

DECLARE @StartDate AS DATETIME ;

DECLARE @EndDate AS DATETIME ;
SET @StartDate = '2001-01-01' ;
SET @EndDate = GETDATE() ;

-- calling the TVF

SELECT p.ProductID ,
p.Name ,
p.ProductNumber ,
pcd.CostDifference
FROM Production.Product AS p
INNER JOIN Production.tvf_ProductCostDifference
(@StartDate, @EndDate)
AS pcd ON p.ProductID = pcd.ProductID
WHERE p.Name LIKE 'A%' ;

-- manually inlining the TVF logic

WITH cte AS
( SELECT
pch.ProductID ,
pch.StandardCost AS Cost ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( PARTITION BY pch.ProductID ORDER BY StartDate ASC )
AS rn_1 ,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER( PARTITION BY pch.ProductID ORDER BY StartDate DESC )
AS rn_2
FROM Production.ProductCostHistory AS pch
WHERE pch.EndDate BETWEEN @StartDate AND @EndDate
)
SELECT x.ProductID ,
y.Cost - x.Cost AS CostDifference
FROM Production.Product AS p
INNER JOIN cte AS x ON p.ProductID = x.ProductID
INNER JOIN cte AS y ON x.ProductID = y.ProductID AND x.rn_1 = y.rn_2
WHERE x.rn_1 = 1 AND p.Name LIKE 'A%'

Listing 22: Re-writing a TVF with an inline function body

If you run Listing 22, you’ll find that the execution plan for the manually-inlined code is
very similar (but not identical) to the plan for calling the TVF (Figure 5) and performs
similar I/O.

Best Practices for TVFs

Table-valued functions are best used when you will be performing operations on a large
number of rows at once. Typically this will be something that could be accomplished
through a complex subquery or functionality that you will re-use multiple times in your
database. TVFs should be used when you can always work with the same set of
parameters – dynamic SQL is not allowed within functions in SQL Server.

It’s best to use TVFs when you only have a small dataset that could be used in the TVF.
Once you start getting into larger numbers of rows, TVFs can become very slow since all
the results of the TVF query are evaluated before being filtered by the outer query.
When this starts to happen it is best to inline the code. If inlining the TVF code doesn’t
work, you can even look into re-writing the query slightly to use a JOIN instead of a
CROSS APPLY. This might complicate the query, but it can lead to dramatic performance
improvements.

A few useful Built-in Functions

To finish off this article, we’ll briefly review some of the built-in scalar functions that I’ve
frequently found useful.

COALESCE

COALESCE takes an unlimited list of arguments and returns the first non-NULL expression.
One of the advantages of COALESCE is that it can be used to replace lengthy CASE
statements.

SELECT CASE WHEN col_1 IS NOT NULL THEN col_1

WHEN col_2 IS NOT NULL THEN col_2
WHEN col_3 IS NOT NULL THEN col_3
END AS result

Listing 23: A CASE statement

The code in Listing 23 can be simplified by using COALESCE.

SELECT COALESCE(col_1, col_2, col_3) AS result

Listing 24: COALESCE

DATEADD and DATEDIFF

The best way to modify date and time values is by using the DATEADD and DATEDIFF
functions. The DATEADD function can be used to add or subtract an interval to part of a
date.

SELECT DATEADD(hh, 5, GETDATE()) ;

SELECT DATEADD(hh, -5, GETDATE()) ;
SELECT DATEADD(dd, 1, GETDATE()) ;

Listing 25: Modifying dates

The DATEDIFF function can be used to calculate the difference between to dates. DATEDIFF
is similar to DATEADD – DATEDIFF gets the difference between two dates using the given
time interval (year, months, seconds, and so on).

SELECT DATEDIFF(dd, '2010-02-05', GETDATE()) ;

SELECT DATEDIFF(hh, '2010-01-04 09:37:00', '2010-03-02 17:54:25') ;

Listing 26: Finding the difference between two points in time

One practical use of the DATEDIFF function is to find the beginning of the current day or
month.

SELECT DATEADD(dd, DATEDIFF(dd, 0, GETDATE()), 0) AS beginning_of_day ;

SELECT DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(mm, 0, GETDATE()), 0)
AS beginning_of_month ;

Listing 27: Beginning of the day or month

This approach to getting the beginning of the day computes the number of days since
the dawn of SQL Server time (January 1, 1900). We then add that number of days to
the dawn of SQL Server time and we now have to beginning of the current hour, day,
month, or even year.

SIGN

SIGN returns +1, 0, or -1 based on the expression supplied.

SELECT SIGN(10 - 14)

Listing 28: Using SIGN

STUFF

STUFF is a powerful built-in function. It inserts one string into another. In addition, it also
removes a specific number of characters from one string and adds the second string in
place of the removed characters. That isn’t a very clear explanation, so let’s take a look
at an example.

SELECT STUFF('junk goes here', 1, 4, 'STUFF')

/*
---------------
STUFF goes here
*/

Listing 29: Using STUFF

The STUFF function can be combined with several XML functions to create a comma-
separated list of values from a table.

SELECT STUFF(( SELECT ',' + Name AS [text()]

FROM Production.Culture
FOR
XML PATH('')
), 1, 1, '') AS cultures ;

Listing 30: Creating a comma-separated list with STUFF

Summary
User-defined functions give us the ability to create reusable chunks of code that simplify
the code we write. UDFs can be embedded in queries as single, scalar values or as table
valued functions. Effective use of UDFs can increase the readability of your code,
enhance functionality, and increase maintainability.