MySQL to SQL Server Coding Differences

By: Tibor Nagy

Overview

There are certain differences between some commonly used SQL code in Microsoft SQL Server's Transact SQL and MySQL.

Explanation

The following code snippets show examples of some commons functions which are different in the two database management systems. The first code is for MySQL and the second code is for MS SQL.

Length of a string:

SELECT CHARACTER_LENGTH(string_data)
FROM TestTable

SELECT LEN(string_data)
FROM TestTable

Concatenation of strings:

SELECT CONCAT('MS','SQL','Tips')

SELECT ('MS' + 'SQL' + 'Tips')

Select first 10 records from a table:

SELECT * FROM TestTable WHERE id=12 LIMIT 10

SELECT TOP 10 * FROM TestTable WHERE id=12

Generate Globally Unique Identifier (GUID):

SELECT UUID()

SELECT NEWID()

Select a random record:

SELECT * FROM TestTable ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

SELECT TOP 1 * FROM TestTable ORDER BY NEWID()

Return current date and time:

SELECT NOW()

SELECT GETDATE()

Auto increment field definition:

TestTable INTEGER AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY

TestTable INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY

Database version:

SELECT VERSION()

SELECT @@VERSION