Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Display parameter Label field - SSRS

I was familiar with displaying a parameter's value field by using the expression:
 =Parameters!parameterfield.Value

But in many cases this value will be a key field and pointless to display. The 'Label' field is required and is obtained by simply changing the expression to:
=Parameters!parameterfield.Label

Simple and obvious really!

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Return a random row - SQL

Instead of using the RAND() function which I believe is not truly random since using the same seed value results in the same output:



Whereas, CHECKSUM(NEWID()) would work:


and can thus be used to return a random row:


SELECT TOP(1) School.SchoolNameFROM School
ORDER BY CHECKSUM(NEWID());