Thanks everybody. I'd been trying to figure this out for a while. I was using local variables with a case function which apparently don't work in a select statement. I even posed the question to a local SQL users group that meets on Microsoft campus, they thought it was an odd question too. Aah, the life of datamining.

I was able to get Batgirl's query to work. I love the linear regression idea, too. Maybe that will be the next version. I need to figure what values to assign!

Sean, I tried yours but got lost somewhere. Probably because I have several conditions (i.e. where clauses) that I don't want in the count but are universal. I figure if I filter by those first it will speed up the query.

So here is my slight modification of Batgirls query.

SELECT *

FROM table

WHERE

--these UniversalConditions (where clauses) are mandatory all must be true

UniversalCondition1

UniversalCondition2

UniversalCondition3

UniversalCondition4

--inside the Case Statement are Variable Conditions where I will accept 8

--out of 10

(

CASE

WHEN condition1 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition2 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition3 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition4 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition5 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition6 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition7 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition8 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition9 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END + CASE

WHEN condition10 = 'xxx'

THEN 1

ELSE 0

END

) >= 8

Is there always one more question?

Mine is, "is there a way to have the total count display as well?" In other words, is this row a "10" a "9" or an "8"?