Accident is difficult to know, but it's certainly NOT DOCUMENTED and NOT SUPPORTED. However, a member of the SQL Server team has told me that the feature will stay...

Please read this KB article before using this technique:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;287515

Depends on what you change!

If you change the interfaces, of course you'll have to change the function.

David,

Off-topic for this thread, but assuming that OldCol is your IDENTITY column:

ALTER TABLE YourTable

ADD NewCol INT NULL

GO

UPDATE YourTable

SET NewCol = OldCol

GO

ALTER TABLE YourTable

ALTER COLUMN NewCol INT NOT NULL

GO

ALTER TABLE YourTable

DROP...

I'd just like to weigh in and say that although I wrote the UDF, I don't think it made a very good QOD -- too vague. But many thanks...

The site is really in bad shape today, but this direct link into the article appears to work:

http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/amachanic/archive/2004/11/10/5065.aspx

Nick,

You forget a key problem with the OTLT (One True Lookup Table), what dcpeterson calls a "MUCK" table -- It very clearly violates the First Normal Form, destroying all data...

Frank, as I said, Urban Dictionary is your friend:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bummed&r=f

I turned this into a UDF, which you can find here:

http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/amachanic/articles/CountSubstring.aspx

By the way, that query only looks at characters AFTER the word 'profit' ...

So it would find a match (if it were a word) on 'unprofit'.

If that's a problem, change...

Nah, that doesn't have the urban flare we require in the US...

Try:

That UDF is phat!

or:

That UDF is tha' shiznit!

or for a more '80s vibe:

That UDF is bitchin'!

... You can catch...

Jeff:

Personally I would include ALL days in the calendar table -- that way you can easily detect gaps, count days minus holidays in ranges, etc.

The calendar table can't get too...

Frank,

SQLJunkies site unfortunately has a bug and they have to restart the blog once or twice a day -- luckily they're upgrading this...

Try:

Select Distinct [4Blocker_Date]

From TempTab

And in the future, avoid using numeric characters at the beginning of column names... As you can see, SQL Server does not like it

I'm not a huge fan of the LEN(REPLACE) method (it fails for strings over 8000 characters); instead, I'd recommend:

First create a table of numbers:

SELECT IDENTITY(int, 1, 1) AS Number

INTO #Numbers

FROM...