It sounds like you are asking a broader question that it may seem. 

First, if every teacher calculates their grades differently, you will have one heck of a set of...

It is pertitent...  I say it is mandatory whether that is the case or not!  And SQL Server 2000 should put out a patch MAKING it Mandatory! 

Haven't read that article, but I have CHAR(39) memorized for precisely this sitiuation! 

Can you give us some test data?  Also, can you show what output you get and what output you want?  It is hard to tell what your problem is from...

You use AS for the same reason you should capitlize key words like SELECT, FROM, LIKE, LEN(), GETDATE(), WHERE, etc.!!!! 

I am a major stickler on that!  A-Type!  I will...

Thanks!  I tried it and although over 50 iterations it should a slight improvement, it wasn't that much faster; which really surprised me! 

I will keep messing with approaches.  (I...

You could also try an easy addition to your select statement:

SELECT top 10 (left(Thedate,11) + ' - ' + consultantname ) AS 'Consultant Name', Thedate AS 'Date', COUNT(*) AS...

Sergiy, you are correct!  I had always been under the impression that char fields padded their entries...  And I am using Simple SQL db at my home. 

CREATE TABLE #Character(...

Glad I could help!   This is an odd requirment - would you care to be more explicit about why you need these unusual results?  As the number of Column1 entries...

Not when it is a CHAR field.  That is true of VARCHAR. 

The sledge hammer is back!   

This will work, but it is somewhat involved; although the request is rather involved as well...

DECLARE @t...

Well that, and in my case, to get answers as well!   

You 'da woman!  Sorry, I got caught up at work and could not come back to this..., glad you were able to figure it out. 

Can you make it allow NULLs?  That would require fewer functions to be implemented for checking...

I cannot see what your question is.  What is returns and what you want look the same to me...