Question

I have almost finished replacing our applications back end with Sql Server but am coming up against an issue. The following Access query is not working with Sql Server.

SELECT table1.*
FROM   table1
       INNER JOIN (table2
                   INNER JOIN table3
                           ON ( table2.custkey = table3.custkey )
                              AND ( table2.sequence = table3.sequence ))
               ON table1.account = table2.account
WHERE  (( LEFT(table2.keyid, 1) = 'B' ))
ORDER  BY table3.lastname & table3.firstname,
          table1.account; 

I have tried multiple variations of this statement but have not been able to get it to work. Some help with this statement will help me modify a few others. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The only thing that sticks out is “&” which is + in SQL Server. However, & in access also treats NULL values as the empty string, which needs further processing with ISNULL in SQL Server:

SELECT table1.*
FROM   table1
       INNER JOIN (table2
                   INNER JOIN table3
                           ON ( table2.custkey = table3.custkey )
                              AND ( table2.sequence = table3.sequence ))
               ON table1.account = table2.account
WHERE  (( LEFT(table2.keyid, 1) = 'B' ))
ORDER  BY isnull(table3.lastname,'') + isnull(table3.firstname,''),
          table1.account; 

If I were to write the query in SQL Server from scratch, I would probably do the joins serially rather than do the t2-t3 in a bracket before joining back to t1. The test for the first character would also be expressed as LIKE (a personal preference).

  SELECT table1.*
    FROM table1
    JOIN table2 ON table1.account = table2.account
    JOIN table3 ON table2.custkey = table3.custkey AND table2.sequence = table3.sequence
   WHERE table2.keyid LIKE 'B%'
ORDER BY isnull(table3.lastname,'') + isnull(table3.firstname,''), table1.account;