I looked at roles-SQL Server, predefined. It's not impossible that both statement appear in BOL

Please post this in the T-SQL forum!

Would this help

Hey Brian,

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=61&messageid=96194 

Maybe I should explain myself a bit.

Sure, #2 on your list is kind of reference for T-SQL. Most chapters are very interesting, but some are not...

Actually, I'm waiting on Advanced...

It's all relative

Might be worth considering placing a DEFAULT value of 0 on your column, otherwise you'll face the problem you know have.

Another approach might be to use COALESCE() like this

SET NOCOUNT...

In addition to Allens' post this might be interesting http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;257856

Place to whole statement in your string and execute it.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/bestof/

Meanwhile I have come to the conclusion, that the only book that's entirely worth reading is Inside SQL Server 2000 by Kalen Delaney. But that's just me.

Yes, Erland's article has a section on this

http://www.sommarskog.se/dynamic_sql.html#Dyn_DB 

I might be flamed again , but I think EXISTS will almost always be faster than using COUNT(*).

But as Thomas already said, without...

It might be helpful to read nested transactions in BOL

Mabye Jonathan's reply here http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=8&messageid=96509 will help you. There is also an example in BOL. Search for pivot table.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=65&messageid=12455

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=9&messageid=17329

Hope these links are of any value for you