There are some minor details that could be cleaned up, like declaring the cursor as "local fast_forward", which would speed it up a bit.

The main thing I'd look at is...

Yeah, I've stopped plenty of queries at that point without that error. Weird.

It would queue everything up and keep on running. Users would get their queries slower. The proc in the background would finish slower too.

declare @Rows int

select @rows = 1

while @rows > 0

begin

select @rows = 0

delete from dbo.Table1

select @rows = @rows + @@rowcount

delete from dbo.Table2

...

My guess (and guessing it is) is that you stopping it caused some problem with the grid creation. Maybe it was partway through creating the grid and had to...

No temp tables in functions. However, you can use table variables. That might do what you need.

Don't use Between for date ranges. Use:

Where date >= '5/16/2008' and date < '5/17/2008'

I find "in" easier to read, in these cases. As far as SQL is concerned, both statements are the same.

Cool. Glad you got it working.

Even in a case-insensitive collation, you can convert a string to it's component ASCII code numbers, and check for patterns in those. Since upper-case letters are a different range...

Like Matt suggested, leave the presentation in the reporting application. Making SQL do this is overly complex and will slow the whole thing down. Crystal does pretty layouts...

Mark's solution does work with the "closed-open" design, it's just a question of whether you use "<=" or "<" in the join.

If you need it, I can provide the mathematical...

I think this may be a case of reversed sequence, or, to use more IT-centric terminology, "premature optimization". Since you don't know yet (as of when the original post...

Yes, you can force a view to use a different data type than the underlying table. The question is, why would you? It won't gain you anything at...

Have you tried installing just the manager, without re-installing SSRS completely?

If so, all I can suggest is unistall and re-install.