ok to answer some of the questions : 
1) why are you planning to partition such a small table?
Because the existing month end processing which apparently updates this table(...

I guess I didn't explain my case properly. The two date values in integer will not go away from table , I just want to add a new column which...

Thanks for the suggestions guys.. Since this is not to be done urgently, I'm inclined to explore MDS and then make a decision even if it takes up some time....

option 1 :

create a CURSOR.For each row in the table, read the columns into varibales and check for the range and then update a counter,later update the counter before...

thanks , I'm sure this soultion would work , howeevr i was still interested to know whether it is possible to use the same file in 'Read Only' mode just...

thanks... the error was due to data type mismatch where the SQL is trying to convert an alphanumeric valkues into integer before comparing.

I have resolved it using ISNUMERIC() function ,...

please let me know if using try,catch can help..

nice article for beginners.. thanks..now i can ask the new joiners to refer to this article directly.

thanks so much for the info people :-)... i had spent hours rectifying this error...