Sharon Matyk (9/14/2009)
Whilst I enjoyed the mental exercise and learning something I didn't know about 2005, I just can't picture when I would actually do such a join in real life. Is there a logical, meaningful example that was the basis of this problem ... and if not, does anyone have any ideas of when you'd prefer results which only join multiple values in this manner?
Heh... I don't know about now, but I went through that with customer placement with AT&T years ago... even though a 3.5" diskette could hold thousands of new customer records, they only allowed us to put 100 on a disk and they had to all be in the same "region". Even when they shifted to FTP uploads, they still kept the paradigm of only 100 customers in a batch.
The reason why they did this is they would have a keypunch person verify each phone number manually then prep a work order for a tech. They used 100 as the breaking point for how many a tech should be able to handle in a day.
I think they're a little more efficient now... well... maybe. 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.