Hiya. . . Some of you may have already seen this, but just in case you haven’t; Some excellent SQL Server…

Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad you like the site.

The & operator actually has nothing to do with XML; in the example above, XML was just used to help format the result set. The & operator is returning the bitwise value if the bitwise product contains it. To expand on the example above…

CREATE TABLE #myTable
(
      myWeekDay                 VARCHAR(10)
    , bitwiseProduct            TINYINT
    , bitwiseValue              TINYINT
    , bitwiseOperatorResults    TINYINT
);
 
INSERT INTO #myTable
SELECT 'Sunday', 42, 1, 42 & 1 UNION All
SELECT 'Monday', 42, 2, 42 & 2 UNION All
SELECT 'Tuesday', 42, 4, 42 & 4 UNION All
SELECT 'Wednesday', 42, 8, 42 & 8 UNION All
SELECT 'Thursday', 42, 16, 42 & 16 UNION All
SELECT 'Friday', 42, 32, 42 & 32 UNION All
SELECT 'Saturday', 42, 64, 42 & 64;

Now run these 2 queries to better examine what we’re doing with the WHERE a.attributes & b.attribute <> 0 syntax:

SELECT * FROM #myTable;
 
SELECT *
FROM #myTable
WHERE bitwiseOperatorResults <> 0;

The first query shows you the results of passing each of the values into the bitwise product, with the use of the & operator. The second query shows you only those values that are contained in the bitwise product, which means they are “selected.”

Does that help? If not, let me know and I’ll expand on it further.

I am kind of new to XML, couldn’t understand the & operator used in the below query: Can you please shed some light on this..

WHERE a.attributes & b.attribute 0

SELECT a.item
, REPLACE( REPLACE( REPLACE((
SELECT VALUE
FROM #statusLookup AS b
WHERE a.attributes & b.attribute 0
ORDER BY b.VALUE FOR XML Raw)
, ‘”/><row value=”‘, ‘, ‘), ”, ”)
AS ‘attributes’
FROM myTable a
ORDER BY a.item;