You should be able to do that pretty easily in the underlying query, just by using IsNull or Coalesce.

First = Top 1

Last = Top 1 with inverted Order By

For example:

select

(select top 1 MyColumn

from MyTable

Order By MyColumn) as First,

...

Use CLR procs/functions for those....

Are there any transformations at all on that column? Derived column or anything else?

Have you considered using a Nested Sets style hierarchy? They are much, much faster to query, and usually work better in SSAS that way.

Data on hierarchies at: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/65540/

Data on...

I searched for "oledb 64-bit sql" online, and found a bunch of articles that seem to suggest you need the Oracle 10G client and that you need to include the...

Try this:

declare @xmlFile xml

set @xmlFile = '<?xml version="1.0"?>

<FamilyAndSubFamily>

<myStruct parentStructId="0" family="18" subFamily="11" />

<myStruct parentStructId="0" family="43" subFamily="32" />

<myStruct parentStructId="0" family="7" subFamily="0" />

</FamilyAndSubFamily>

';

--

SELECT

x.i.query('.').value('(myStruct/@parentStructId)[1]','int') AS ParentStructID,

x.i.query('.').value('(myStruct/@family)[1]','int') AS Family,

x.i.query('.').value('(myStruct/@subFamily)[1]','int') AS SubFamily

FROM @xmlFile.nodes('/FamilyAndSubFamily/myStruct') as x(i);

More likely, it's an issue with distributed transactions. Those can be very, very slow.

I'd have to see the query to give advice on it, but take a look at...

Jeff Moden (2/17/2011)

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Heh... the list is growing by leaps and bounds. Lot's of folks sent me the same request via...

Uripedes Pants (2/11/2011)

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my 2 cents.... Jack's idea of parent/child user/payment is the way I'd go. This will retain payment history which someone is sure to ask for. however,...

Yes, do that.

Yes, do that.

I'm not clear on what you're asking.

Are you planning on replicating, and backing up the target database in order to use that for DR? If so, can you clarify...

Just to expand on what Grant wrote:

SQL table storage requires writing to the transaction log, checking locks, resolving locks, writing to the table, marking the tran log as committed, et...

You'd have to use dynamic SQL for that.

Build the query string using sys.columns, then execute it using sp_executesql.