>I guess not.

Guess again

UPDATE products

 SET productdetail = @detail, 

 --Set productprice equal to itself, if @price is null

 productprice = IsNull(@price, productprice)

WHERE productid = @id

[Edit]...

Lookups can be useful if you need to look something up on a different data source.

With 2 tables in the same data source, a lookup will nearly always be slower. You can...

Create a linked server. Read BOL topic sp_addlinkedserver

Once the link is created, T-SQL is as follows:

INSERT INTO YourTable  (Column List)

SELECT Column List

FROM [LinkName].[DatabaseName].[DBOwner].[TableName]

>>If I create the index on the array, it provides no real improvement because SQL reads from the same drive that the db is on

That part is definitely not true.

An...

If you have a table that is left-joined, and you then apply a WHERE to that table, you force it back to an INNER JOIN. Try this:

SELECT PRODUCTS.PRODUCT_ID, PRODUCTS.P_NAME, VOTES.V_SCORE

FROM...

For a set-based solution, you need a table of all possible numbers. You can get this by cross-joining 2 tables of known large size:

-- Limit to as many...

You'll need to post the full SQL, including the GROUP BY.

By changing the column list in SELECT, you potentially change the order in which rows are returned.

It may be you are just seeing a different part of the resultset.

Only way...

If this is taking 30+ minutes on only 50K rows, then there's more going on, and most likely cardinality issues.

What is the uniqueness of field1 and field2 in the 2...

1 rounds before summing, the other sums before rounding.

If you remove decimal places before summing, and the numbers are all positive, then obviously you'll get a different number .

Sum(5.4 +...

1. Since there is no clustered index, the table may be a highly fragmented heap, requiring more disk I/O than necessary

2. If the database is running in full recovery mode,...

IF @@ROWCOUNT = 0

BEGIN

    ALTER TABLE [dbo].[RESULTS] ADD [TOTAL_VOTES] int not NULL DEFAULT (0);

    UPDATE RESULTS SET TOTAL_VOTES = (OPTION1 + OPTION2 + OPTION3 + OPTION4 + OPTION5 +...

>>How do you do Dynamic SQL for the update statement?  I've never done dynamic SQL...

Declare @sql varchar(1000)

if (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS

 WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'RESULTS'

 AND COLUMN_NAME = 'TOTAL_VOTES'

   ) = 0

begin

 ...

If you have a mix of qualified and non-qualified text fields, you are probably going to have to do some sort of data scrubbing either before or after import.

You could...

The SQL for the "link table" (intersection table) would look something like this:

INSERT INTO Purchase_Inv_Trans

  (Inv_ID, Transaction_ID)

SELECT

  pi.InvoiceID, t.TransactionID

FROM [Purchase Invoices] As src

INNER JOIN Purchase_Invoice As pi

  On...