Hm, it would be better to explicitely create the table first and then to use two separate statements to select n rows from one group and the rest from the...

Try it out, and you'll see

The answer is also simple.

You can't do this in one simgle statement. At least am I not aware of a way for it.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;173308

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;258038

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/sql/2000/all/reskit/en-us/part3/c1161.mspx

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/20460/20460.html?Ad=1

might be a start

Btw, your friend can always do something like

http://www.google.de/search?q=blob+sql+server+asp&hl=de&lr=&start=20&sa=N

Just out of curiosity. How will you get dynamic sql inside a UDF to work?

And a note on SET ROWCOUNT. This limits the...

Not sure, how or why you want to parse string like 'San Francisco, CA, USA' into 3 columns as this would still leave non-atomic data in one column, thus violating...

Here's a pretty good overview on error handling in SQL Server:

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

http://www.sommarskog.se/error-handling-I.html

ISNULL(CI.InsuranceStartDate, '01 Jan 1900') AS 'InsuranceStartDate'

I would rather prefer a save format like

ISNULL(CI.InsuranceStartDate, '19000101') AS 'InsuranceStartDate'

But why does an insurance not always have a starting date anyway? Curious how...

Looking for best practices from a developer's perspective. To much code to write & not enough reading time. I hate discovering a week after I've finished a project that something I...

(Yes, I'm a geek who reads programming books in bed.) 

LOL. Nothing wrong with this at times. I guess you're in very good company here with this habit.

Just for giggles. What about:

create table #x ( nm varchar(30) not null )

insert #x select 'John Travolta'

insert #x select 'Samuel S Jackson'

insert #x select 'John James Doe'

select

 isnull(parsename(replace(nm,' ','.'),3),parsename(replace(nm,' ','.'),2))

 ,...

Haha, you have seen too much Pulp fiction, Kenneth

The following works for me

DECLARE @id NVARCHAR(6)

DECLARE @stmt NVARCHAR(20)

SET @ID = 53

SET @stmt = 'KILL '+ @ID

EXEC sp_ExecuteSQL @stmt

Btw, you should really add an ORDER BY when you select your TOP 2, otherwise your resultset is not predictable and meaningless.

The only difference I see between your statement and mine, is that I do a SELECT TOP 2 ...ORDER BY ...DESC, while you don't. Both execution plans are the same,...