Okay, this is an "administrative" one-time action. I think that's quite okay for such cases. The only alternative I can think of right now, might be sp_MSforeachtable. But if you...

Hey, I should have rather posted this instead:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040823/psychopath.html

And identify the common "management enemy"

...or sp_attach_db.

Not exactly an answer, but you can add ISQLW.EXE to the externals tools in EXTRAS and then use something like ALT+X 1 to launch QA.

Hm, I wouldn't reinvent the wheel, but rather have a look at http://www.hotscripts.com or similar sites like http://www.sourceforge.net . There are a lot of geeks around who developed...

>But what if the dates are so randomly distributed that no date is the same?

In this case you'll find that you get two rows per name as requested.

Wrong!

The WITH TIES is not really needed in this situation, I think, because of the combination of ...IN... TOP 2 ... WITH TIES. If you have two or more rows with...

Regarding the funnies, I will take them in the spirit they were meant (I hope)

Gee, no. The funnies had nothing to do with your question!!!

Please, don't get this wrong. If...

You, too.

Here's one more: http://www.baetzler.de/humor/null.html

Actually I think it's also in the header information of each database's primary file.

Okay, some Friday funnies:

From speaking to one of the guys here, he tells me it is a port of an old access app.

Sorry about that.

Sounds like a port of an old Access app

But to answer your question, I don't think there should issues when joining both columns....

Counterquestion:

Why do the columns that you join on have different datatype length?