I was using the term collation more generally than just the meaning to SQL Server.  Nyulg described how strings must be collated, as the...

> I know this is a nasty behaviour of EM when creating tables with EM that the primary key will become also the clustered index when you do not take...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/maintain/security/sp3sec/default.asp

Apparently. 

"Real DBAs don't use Enterprise Manager." 

Since Frank seems to be uncharacteristically quiescent...

Read this, not the article you reference:

http://www.sommarskog.se/dyn-search.html

Also, there are some things that cannot be done without...

You mean "RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK = 'db dump'" of course.

Create a temporary table with the same column types as the result set from the command.  Then

INSERT #TempBU

EXEC('RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM...

Did you use sp_rename?

Is RetailMember actually a view and not a table?

You can search the version string for "MSDE".  You can get the version string via DMO (the VersionString property of the SQLServer object) or by executing a SQL query like

SELECT...

Well, it is a UDF...

Can't we assume everyone's upgraded by now?  It's been three and a half years... 

From BOL:

"A local temporary table created in a stored procedure is dropped automatically when the stored procedure completes. The table can be referenced by any nested stored procedures executed by...

When you get different results in different environments, suspect some setting differs between the environments.  Try adding this at the beginning of your stored procedure:

SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL OFF

To convert an integer to an actual hexadecimal value you can just:

DECLARE @i int

SET @i = 1234

SELECT CAST(@i AS varbinary)

To display it as a string, I usually cheat and use...

Even if the same number of bytes, char values will be slightly slower than int values when used like this (because of collation).  The reasons for using them, including the one...

To answer the question from the subject line...

SELECT c.ContactD_Id, c.ContactD_ContactMid, c.ContactD_Status, c.ContactD_Email

FROM Contacts c JOIN

(SELECT ContactD_ContactMid, MAX(ContactD_Status) ContactD_Status

 FROM Contacts

 GROUP BY ContactD_ContactMid) x ON...