maintaining databases in BOL might be a good starting point

Can you post some more information about your data to output, how the output now looks and how it should look like?

Yes, that would be a way to go.

You can use the ISQL or OSQL utility. Look at up in BOL. One of them is deprecated, and i always forget which one

What do you mean by 'clean up the indexes'?

Are you looking for UPDATE/DROP STATISTICS...

Hey, Dave, didn't you say some months ago, you're going to update to SQL2k? Or are you waiting for Yukon

As for Antares:

This...

I need User-Defined columns because I am producing a generic core, and most customers also want to store a several other fields. Legislation will also dictate over time that several...

Don't take me too serious on that, but you should tell your customer in a polite and kind way that we live in the 21th century and that PC have...

Why do you think you need *user-defined columns*?

What would be the reason for this?

Played a little bit around with it.

set nocount on

if object_id('ascii_art') is not null

 drop table ascii_art

go

create table ascii_art( col1 varchar(5))

go

insert into ascii_art (col1) values(ascii('|'))

insert...

Ok, that sounds different. Not quite sure if I understand now, but would a look at CHAR and/or ASCII in BOL help?

Sorry, note the double ' sign. Doesn't come out clearly.

You want something like this ?

declare @stmt varchar(11)

set @stmt = 'Hello World'

select N'' + @stmt

-----------

Hello World

(1 row(s)...

Can you post what you've got so far?

There was SQL Server 7 and then...

I bet they have defined identity on the product version number at Microsoft