jw: I can't seem to use the link you posted up.

But when populating variables from columns in a table, would you seriously use

set @a = (select column_A...

You surprised me with that Jason. ...

You know nothing of Javert, 24601 !

I'm afraid I'll have to card you for that one.

Look up the definition of coercion and it is generally defined as forcing or pressuring...

No, the anchor query in a recursive CTE does not count towards the MAXRECURSION limit.

As you can see for yourself in the following example, setting MAXRECURSION to 2 doesn't stop...

I confess to being curious whether or not all the grouping will be faster than the joins we're trying to avoid.

Just for fun, here's another way of looking at it....

I was about to spend a bit of time and effort joining into the debate. But I find that my views are summed up quite nicely here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0

Departing briefly from the fascinating debate in progress, I would like to invite others to consider the coding problem here. I started out trying to help the...

You are welcome, for what my help was worth, but I am going to have to bow out at this point. While it is possible to write...

Understood. But that is not really suitable for a set-based solution in SQL. Which is why I advised you to get some front-end coding done...

Glad it's working, but a null value in the table wouldn't cause the error below:

Msg 137, Level 15, State 2, Line 4

Must declare the scalar variable "@_type".

A word of advice:...

It's more complicated than that, Gus. Take a look at the original question and the solution I gave him (with warnings). The problem is...

The last code you posted (which is repeated below) works on fine for me. Are you posting ALL the code you're executing. Are you sure...

My possible result sets(o/p) from joining two tables are

Possible o/p 1:

col1 col2 col3

1 1 a

1 1 b

Possible o/p 2:

col1 col2 col3

1 1 a

1 2 a

1 1 b

1 2...

Please don't double post. This is essentially the same question I answered here.