Use "Left","Right" and "Charindex"

See BOL for a full description of their use

First off read up on Sql injection, you may well of left youself wide open to an attack.

Secondly to repeat Lowel, the main issue is with the amount...

Good guess Peso , though i think that it may be the 12 days of Christmas 😀

You know....

Create View 12Days

as

Select Qty from Bird where Species = 'Partridge' and InAnPearTree...

Thats only an estimated query plan , not an actual.

What I look for , initially, is a big difference in the actual row count to the estimated row count which...

9 times out of 10 , the query can be more more efficient.

Post the query and the query plan.

Have a look at this link http://sqlinthewild.co.za/index.php/2009/03/19/catch-all-queries/.

Also please post the DDL (indexes as well), when you say 700 accounts records is that in the #accounts table ?

Your query plan...

use

isnull(SHP_ZIP,BILL_ZIP)

Absolutely. If you are...

BOL links

round : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175003.aspx

convert : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187928.aspx

how about using 'round' ?

Or my blog has a simple example

http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/sqlandthelike/archive/2009/10/15/udf-overhead-a-simple-example.aspx

Rolling balance problems are tricky

try this link

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic802558-203-1.aspx

Note that the article is not yet available

Have a quick google for 'quirky update' though

As Flo , suggests, which i personally prefer as an exclusion routine

Or you may want check out the except operator as well

One generic answer for all of your questions , use google.

can you show us how you have attempted to solve this yourself ?