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In this course you’ll learn about the three kinds of UDFs available in SQL Server and will see several examples of functions and how to use them. We’ll start by looking at scalar functions that return a single value, then will explore the two types of table-valued functions. These latter functions let you return a table data type that acts like an in-memory table. Once you understand how to create functions, you’ll realize that now you have almost too many options for writing code: views, stored procedures, the different kinds of functions, and others. So we’ll discuss how to decide which kind of code module to use in different situations, as well as some potential performance issues with using functions.

This course assumes that you have a basic familiarity with the concept of relational databases and a basic understanding of what SQL Server is and the high-level tools in it, as well as how to create and manage objects using Management Studio. You should also have a basic understanding of how SQL Server implements security, including its authentication and authorization schemes, and how to assign permissions on securable objects to principals. You should know the fundamentals of Transact-SQL to write queries to retrieve and update data, and how to execute scripts using the query editor in Management Studio. It will be very helpful, but not absolutely necessary, to have experience with .NET development using Visual Studio 2010 or 2012 for the portions of the course that deal with SQLCLR development. The .NET code included in this course is written in C#, but if you prefer Visual Basic it should be fairly easy to convert the code.