Jeff:

I have a question for you. I originally tried to do the whole problem without the working table, but I kept getting an error that an invalid...

Good question. Gugan, are you dealing with the data from some kind of statistical analysis software? The stats wizards in our analytics group always view data as...

AJ, is there an ORDER BY in your query by any chance?

I ask because when you SELECT TOP (N) rows without an ORDER BY, the execution plan...

Double tally parse with xml concatenation. That was fun. 😀

For my next trick, I will attempt a double gainer with a half twist....

DECLARE @input varchar(100)

DECLARE @output...

Lo, I am a prophet. 😎

Of course you can populate a combo table with whatever you want. If you are going to be populating [TimeLogReason], [Type], and...

I suspect you are going to make the requirements more complicated, but this is a start. We simply create a table to hold all four possible combinations and then...

The ## at the beginning of a temp table name designates that the table is a global temporary table.

Quoting from BOL: Global temporary tables are visible to any user...

Alvin: Keyboard!

Hear, hear !!

(Applause, thunderous applause...)

Hey Lynn, will you check double-check my last post to Trudye? ...

Trudye, we're getting closer, but walk with me just a little further, please. Your original code referenced HDR, DTL and Run_Log tables. You showed data for...

Yes, but he is too much of an *** to feel it. (Associate?, assistant?, asset?)

As far as he is concerned, his poor behavior was rewarded.

You've wasted too...

I just read the "jibber jabber" comment. It was over-the-top offensive, followed by smugness about his rudeness "working." I can't express my sentiments adequately without...

That depends... does the sentiment include pillory or bastinado?

In addition to ROW_NUMBER(), you should also read up on the RANK() and NTILE() functions.

SQL is limited in this respect too. Sorry.

The sample code below will do what you want, after a fashion. But I don't recommend this at all. ...