Thanks, guys! 🙂

Steve, I thought pork chops for breakfast were just a southern thing.

Alvin, I'm sorely tempted this morning to get out of the office and drive up...

Lynn, I may need to borrow a sand dune. Our man with the concurrency question still won't accept that SQL will handle his potential-double-insert fears, even after...

Conditional or not, an INSERT is an INSERT. Look at the code I just sent you and think about it for a moment. Using...

Dean, I recently saw a query where the developer used a temp table to break something down into steps. The result was to run at least...

Typically I try to make things happen in a single query, trying for a single pass through the table(s). If it doesn't seem to be running very fast,...

Another this is, is it good development practice to always select distinct from a table, as my feeling is that, if the table is properly normalized, structured and free...

Jamie, are you thinking that you have to somehow code the locks yourself?

That is incorrect. Look at this. You can start a transaction explicity and leave it hanging in session 1, then go to session 2 and...

Obviously, neither did I. But that's worth remembering. Thanks, Mark!

However, it seems the two CTE approach runs a little faster with a larger number of...

Indexing as in indexes on the database tables to make searches against the tables efficient so they don't cause massive locking and very slow queries. No app can provide that....

Just for fun... Don't ask if you can insert before you can insert. In situations where you actually expect the insert to succeed most of the time,...

There isn't a native one, but why not write one? To solve your DATEDIFF issue, I actually think you want the greater value. It can be made...

Is that band still touring? I thought they broke up.

You really are a ninja, Gus!

...and GSquared is invisible ???