Have you considered that a column that is referenced by an index, a primary key or by a foreign key constraint cannot be altered ?

To correctly write a comparison tool...

See SERVERPROPERTY in Books OnLine

select SERVERPROPERTY ('MachineName')

,SERVERPROPERTY ('InstanceName')

,SERVERPROPERTY ('ServerName')

Note that SERVERPROPERTY ('InstanceName') is NULL when this is the default instance.

For these type of problems, an auxilary table is needed with two options:

1. Containing all of the numbers from zero to something large

2. A calendar table.

See "Why should I consider...

As you have discovered, the TOP is not very usefull when what is needed is the RANK.  If you are using SQL Server 2005, there is a RANK function but...

Actually, please reverse Phill Carter comment:

"Do you mind letting us know which company you're working for. I'm sure I wouldn't be alone in wanting to stay far, far away from...

A typical practice with partioning is to have a job that runs on a scheduled basis that:

1. Creates a new table for the next time periods's data

2. Alters the view to include this...

The OPENXML statement needs to specify element-centric mapping (third parameter needs to be a 2)

When the WITH clause is not specified, the results are returned in an edge table format....

Look in the Books OnLine under "functions" and then overview.

For a full explanation on error handling, see Erland Sommarskog's articles "Error Handling in SQL Server – a Background" at http://www.sommarskog.se/error-handling-I.html

and "Implementing Error Handling with Stored Procedures"

at http://www.sommarskog.se/error-handling-II.html

Here is the...

There are 2 problems with the needed calculation

1. Even Root of a negative number:

What is the square root of a negative four ?

The answer is the imaginary number of...

See "How do I concatenate strings from a column into a single row?" at http://www.aspfaq.com/show.asp?id=2529

The view would be updatable if the partitioning column is part of the primary key and the SQL Server Edition is Enterprise or Developer.

To get the underlying tables and the...

Please see the posts with a subject of "LEFT OUTER JOIN IS NULL or WHERE xx NOT IN(select..)" at

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=8&messageid=236939#bm237152

To summarize the posts:

The "NOT IN" vs "LEFT OUTER JOIN" are NOT...

Are the temporary table names prefixed with a two pound signs such as ##mytemptable ? If so, this is a global temporary table which is accessable by multiple connections...

Another example from Joe Celko is at

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming/browse_thread/thread/a99a5e606f6a8f38/b54521f82b9dd41a%23b54521f82b9dd41a?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=1&num=3

"This is Dr. Codd's T-Join, which was introduced in his book on the second version of the relational model, which were based on the...