I hate to throw a wrench at the machine but this is VB6 that he has graciously inherited...

I have seen both cases of connection pooling and just open the connection/command...

The problem is that the system cannot reconcile CI (Case INsensitive) with CS (Case Sensitive).  Try the below

SELECT CAST([Name] AS VARCHAR(50))      COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS,

  CAST(DescriptionTest AS VARCHAR(255)) COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS

This will convert...

If you have monitoring software like <cough cough> Unicenter that checks services, HDD free size etc...  you could use that to tell if the SQL server service dies too....  and...

Frank,

I would create/open it at program open and close it at program end.  This way you don't have a bunch a open/close which eat the server alive

try researching User-defined function.  You can use these in-line to retrieve data.  There is pretty decent info in BOL

Just to add to the great code from Frank you may want to change the 'ping ' to 'ping -n 1 '.  This will provide 1 ping, 1 ping only...

My problem is that not only is it not receding from forehead but... the hair is now apparently fighting an offensive in my ears, down the back off my neck...

I also think that there may be a flaw in your @acno logic.  see the below

IF ((@acno IS NOT NULL OR @acno <>'') AND (@actype IS NOT NULL OR @actype...

I agree with Frank.  Another reason for the history tables is these rows are no longer reported on and over time I am assuming that these rows MAY outrank the...

David,

as usual you show me where I still have MUCH to learn...

Why not

SELECT FD.[ID], PG.Program

  FROM Fund                     FD

    INNER JOIN ProgramFundsList PF ON FD.Fund    = PF.Fund

    LEFT JOIN Program           PG ON PF.Program = PG.Program

DHaval I am sure that your query would work in Access and Excel.  This is one of the areas that SQL differs from those applications.  Once you get used to...

Have you tried writing the word document to a BLOB (image/text) field??

Is there a rollback or something else that is sucking the memory off the server?

I would start with sp_who2 and go from there.  It may be a long running query/statement,...

I would probably use the value that microsoft uses with a NULL date value (1900-01-01 00:00:00.000)