When you're importing from text files, or Excel/CSV/etc., one of the little-known (aparently) factors is that SQL uses the top four rows to determine the data type. If it...

Would it work to have them type in a delimited list? If so, the query for that is easy.

Is your login a local administrator?

I'd have to see both versions of the query to really comment on this. Exists is pretty high performance when used correctly, but so is cross apply.

If you really...

UTC would be better, in my opinion, than local time.

First, it makes calculating duration easier to calculate, because you can ignore "Spring ahead"/"Fall back" issues.

Second, it's easy to make the...

Good analogy.

I use all three, depending on the circumstances.

There have been times where I judged the error just needed to be fixed and nothing really needed to be said, so...

Thank you. That helps.

milzs (2/23/2010)

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Thanks guys. This is what I finally got to work (I'm using DATE datatypes)

NULLIF(MIN(ISNULL(MyDateField, '1/1/1900')), '1/1/1900')

I was getting "int" conversion errors using values other than '1/1/1900'. I...

By derivation, a "geek" is someone...

Add "AND @DTStart IS NULL" before the "OR" and see if that does what you need.

Makes sense.

You posted while I was writing my answer, so I missed your post completely.

As a second thought, it might be easier to select top 1 and order by the...

Most likely, there's empty space available in the database files and/or log files.

Right-click the database in Management Studio, go to Properties, and look for the Size and Space Available data.

I would need table definitions, insert statements with sample data, and expected results, before I'd be able to venture a solution on this.

For one thing, I'm not clear on your...

tony rogerson (2/18/2010)

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Yes - I do mean a cursor; a static one and not a "update where current".

I don't honestly know what your problem is here Paul - even Jeff...

Nest NullIf and IsNull.

If your datetime column is called MyDate and it's in table MyTable:

select IsNull(MyDate, 0)

from dbo.MyTable;

That will replace the nulls with 0s (datetime 0 = 1 Jan 1900).

Then:

select...