Chapter 4. Procedural Code and CASE Expressions

T-SQL has always included support for procedural programming in the form of control-of-flow statements and cursors. One thing that throws developers from other languages off their guard when migrating to SQL is the peculiar three-valued logic (3VL) we enjoy. I will introduce SQL 3VL, which is different from most other programming languages' simple two-valued Boolean logic, in this chapter. I will also discuss T-SQL control-of-flow constructs, which allow you to change the normally sequential order of statement execution. Control-of-flow statements allow you to branch your code logic with statements like IF...ELSE..., perform loops with statements like WHILE, and perform unconditional jumps with the ...

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