This will do what you want:

Declare @Letter char;
Set @Letter = 'B';

Select  Description
From    TheTable
Where   Left(Description, 1) >= @Letter
Order By Description;

However, it's going to be a...

I took the table def supplied by Lynn and created a primary key on (client, typecode, grp). That at least turned a table scan into a clustered index scan. Then...

So, if I read this correctly, you are inserting all the records into the table, then going through and deleting the older duplicates. This seems straightforward but I have a...

This is bare bones but it will do what you want. I didn't write it in the form of a function, I trust you can do that. The following creates...

The best answer was the three-stage DTS procedure. The proc would actually be simple -- an update and an insert statement.

Let's say your SQL Server table has an identity column...

That doesn't hold water. There will be business rules concerning withdrawals and a Withdraw function/procedure will incorporate those rules. There will also be business rules concerning deposits and a Deposit...

As has already been pointed out, your main problem is your having the IPs stored as strings, so comparison are lexical, i.e. '10' comes before '2'. However, if you really...

I generally prefer to use between to compare dates as functions on the column will prevent index usage.

This is true but I rarely see only the date field in the...

It may be frustrating and taking seemingly forever, but usually when the system balks at what you are trying to do, it is trying to tell you something important.

The first...

You're facing two problems:

1. joining across two servers is inefficient (this has already been pointed out)
2. replicating the entire table just before performing the join is also inefficient and may significantly impact...

Sorry, guys. I just noticed that in the function and the select statement at the end, the table is called days_area instead of DaysArea. I had started to edit my...

Here's a solution. It involves the use of a user function so it's not useful to the original poster. But is does illustrate how absurdly complicated a restriction on the...

Here's a partial answer:

select ID, CurrentArea, RunDate, InvoiceID, count(*) as Days
from
    (select ID, CurrentArea, RunDate, InvoiceID
        from dbo.DaysArea Today
 ...