Oddly enough, I've been thinking about this problem off and on for the last couple of days and then I saw your article today. I have to agree with what Dean Cochrane said in his post on this thread... it's one of the best articles I've seen on this or any other SQL site in a very long while.

You started out by clearly identifying the need and exactly how the problem worked. If there were any doubt, the excellent use of thoughtful and accurate graphics quickly removed all doubt.

You provided everything in code including test data. Lots of folks forget to do that. And code is what people are really after.

I started reading the article and by the time I started thinking "I know how I might do it", there you were with ...

... so I'll add 10 points for your "mind reading" capabilities, as well.

Your formulas and explnations of the formulas where quite clear and, yeah, the more I read, the more I was sure I knew how I'd do it. I kept thinking to myself "I wonder if he's going to use a recursive CTE, triangular join, looped update, or what?" Then I saw what you used and you made my day. Thanks for the leg up and the honorable mention. 🙂 After all the heat I took both on the original article and the rewrite, it was a real pleasure to see someone use the method especially since it was for something totally different to anything demonstrated in the article.

As a bit of a sidebar, I do have to admit that I've not done enough testing on "heap" Temp tables to be comfortable using the method on a "heap". I'll also admit that I haven't been able to break one yet but I'd probably add the normal clustered index to the temp table just to be on the safe side... just like you did in the first example but I believe you just forgot to do in the second example.

Sorry... got carried away. I'll just finish by saying that even if the article didn't mention anything about the Quirky Update method, this would still be an outstanding article in my eyes. Very well done, Gabriel.