Incidentally I recently created a view around OPENQUERY() - data coming from a linked server. Which may have been not the best way to do what I was doing. But anyway, I thought it could be useful to name and CAST to type the columns of the OPENQUERY results - that is, to express explicitly outside the OPENQUERY term the expected columns. But is that worthwhile, or does it perhaps even create a problem?

I haven't been doing the problems lately because I realised if I pass on one that's too hard it doesn't count in the game, and my score looks better than it is. Like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, I can look at the question and decide to ignore it and keep what I've got. Maybe the score system should keep count of that. I mean, I also don't want to guess, particularly on a point I don't currently understand but may need to at a later date.