Since that's pretty much what XML exists for, it does seem like a reasonable approach.

Of course, that raises the question of, "why bother shredding the XML into relational tables in...

In small businesses, that's going to be true.

Now, try analyzing Microsoft's sales figures that way...:-)

For the most part, the heavy duty features are used in larger organizations with a lot...

I don't believe there is such a function in T-SQL. But I'd also say that this kind of thing should be done in the presentation layer, not in the...

Nope. I took the name thing into account. It's only being used at the DataElements level, which is where you said it belongs.

Before you start stuffing the string, make sure that times before 10 AM are stored with leading zeroes. If not, you might have a problem when 9:00 AM tries...

Definitely know how that goes. Change one thing at a time, so if it breaks, you know exactly what to undo.

I got my current DBA job through Monster.

If you get too many resumes, I'd say hire a temp, or get someone's teenage kid to come in for minimum wage, and...

For a very simple cube like that tutorial, no, there's no real point to it.

For complex cubes working on millions of rows of relational data, having it pre-aggregated for various...

XML disappears from the forum if you just put it straight in there. I think you can use a code tag with the XML type, or (definitely) you can...

What data type is column Hex? Binary? Int? Varchar?

Take a look at what I've attached. Test it, see if you can extend it out to include your other tables, or if I have any sort of critical...

Yep. Completely missed that one.

If you're just trying to make a comma list out of the vertical list, try the Replace function. It can replace a line-break with a comma pretty easily.

If you're going that...

I may be mistaken, but I don't think you can combine multiple alter column statements into a single command.