For the number of us (greater everyday) who live in "contractor-land," where holidays don't exist, this is a very neat function.

I'm very pleased by it for two reasons...

• Reminds developers of the existence/usefulness/potential of UDFs in the data-layer
• Does so in a way that never even hints at cursor use

Now, to come up with the platform-specific equivalents...I work in an Oracle/Informix shop