Yes guys, the original version is "What happened to the other dollar?"

Actually, I think the original version may go something like...

III centurions enter an inn and the innkeeper's son...

:blink:

(groan) :pinch:

Congratulations Grant!!

and Gary....

...... Congratulations on turning away from the Dark Side.

Both "Ping Pong Ball" and "Cricket" contain the letter "I".

You're welcome, gnethery, and thanks for taking the time to tell us it works for you.

I checked it out. Thanks Gus.

The article describes the way I've always done it, but it's still using dynamic SQL. I will have to remember that...

Same problem. Sorry about that. I was originally excited about PIVOT until I realized that it wasn't truly dynamic like pivot tables in Excel....

Gus is right. You want to do something dynamically without using dynamic SQL.

If I read what you want correctly, you want to produce something like this

WHERE @var...

You're very welcome. I will pass the credit for time and effort to the bright people who made the optimizer smart enough to produce elegant executions plans from...

You're welcome, Luis.

CROSS APPLY is a very useful technique to "join" both subqueries and Inline Table Valued Functions. The optimizer generates very efficient execution plans when I've used this...

Lynn is correct. Two points for the little green Master. :hehe:

I'm sure you'll work it out, mate. 😛

Here is an example of finding the last of anything in 2005. Runs quick.

declare @tbl table (dept varchar(10), name varchar(10), rowID int identity(1,1))

insert into @tbl

select 'Shipping','Amy' union all

select...

There might be a lot of page splits happening as the table is rebuilt.

It's not like you are adding a varchar field with no data in it....