Hi Jude

The huge count is from the cross join (tblstudent_course, tblnew_entrants with nothing in the WHERE clause to join them).

All rows in tblstudent_course which don't have a match in...

Hi John

The shortfalls of ISNUMERIC have been discussed many times before. This should help:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic456023-338-1.aspx

Cheers

ChrisM

Hi Neal

I think there's some confusion here because of this...

and this

I reckon what you mean to say is...

No worries Dave - beer time soon! 😀

The recommended method which Jack posted (where are ya, Jack?) will always run fast because the column in the WHERE clause on which it operates isn't subjected to any computation...

SELECT CONVERT(DATETIME, STUFF(STUFF('280908',3,0,'/'),6,0,'/'), 3)

Here's an excellent article which, even if it doesn't directly answer your question, will ensure that the method you are using for writing to Excel from SQL Server is appropriate...

Dave, I know you have a working solution for this problem now - but a different take on it gives this result:

SELECT FromID = CASE hc.Direction WHEN 'O' THEN pl1.location...

Here's a comparison between the popular method recommended by Jack, and the two methods suggested by Orion Pax.

--===== Create and populate the test table

CREATE TABLE #DateTest (TestDate DATETIME NOT NULL)

INSERT...

Have a word with Vasaharshit, he's the expert on this question:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic532276-373-1.aspx

You're welcome. Might be worth your while taking a look at the following thread:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic532242-338-1.aspx#bm532442

It's a left join, Charles.

Return all rows from the table on the left side of the operator, and only matching rows from the table on the right.

SELECT a.*

FROM TableA...

DROP TABLE #Table_A

DROP TABLE #Table_B

CREATE TABLE #Table_A (Id CHAR(3), CourseId CHAR(3), [Group] CHAR(1), Weekday CHAR(1), Starttime CHAR(4), EndTime CHAR(4), Facultyid CHAR(6))

INSERT INTO #Table_A (Id, CourseId, [Group], Weekday, Starttime, EndTime, Facultyid)

SELECT...

Cheers Chris - it's pretty much what you'd expect really.

Hey Chris, if you still have your test environment handy, would you mind comparing the SQL2k version against the 2k5 versions?

Cheers

ChrisM

DROP TABLE #Customers

CREATE TABLE #Customers (AccountNum int, DM_Source_Id int, Address...