Why do you have parentheses around the columns in the select statement?

That's the file status, not the database status. Database status is in sys.databases.

rboggess (8/18/2009)

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Thank you for the clarification. I knew I...

You don't lose data by shrinking the log file. You can lose your recovery path if you truncate it, but you won't lose data by shrinking it.

The main problem...

Or you can set up a group that has the level of access you want, and no more than that, and let them use Management Studio. That's better than...

On the point of the DBA ruling the production database:

You cannot be held responsible for what you don't control. "Responsibility" without control is just blame. Conversely, control without...

rboggess (8/18/2009)

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Clearly, I'm missing something. Either that, or I'm horribly spoilt. Just for clarification, we're talking about playing around on a development computer. A computer, disk (or...

stephen.lear (8/18/2009)

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Your comment concerning Access is a bit unfair. Everyone starts somewhere. Just because a person started badly you can't judge the rest of their career on it.

Personally, I have...

Abbi: Not a good idea to post your e-mail address openly on web pages. Spammers use bots to scan for that kind of thing and you'll get into their...

You could start with parsing, and then you'd have to build something yourself to test for validity.

It could be as simple as taking the SQL statement and running it as...

Not sure what you mean. Management Studio can be used a query tool, and the Express version is free. Is that what you mean?

I favor a completely open playground, a slightly locked down dev box, and totally locked test, QA, and production boxes.

The playground is where you can try just anything at all....

Lowell, I don't think that will work with file names like "My Long File . Has Extra . Periods . In . It .xls".

For something like that, if you just...

You're welcome.

My main outsourcing experience started with the owner of the company we would be ourtsourcing to flying to the US to meet us.

He took one look at the database I'd...