You might want to start here:

https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/bin-packing-problems-the-sql/

Mr. Celko is always an interesting read unless he happens to be answering a forum question.

Yes, what Sean said, and:

Your 'where' clause in the update doesn't actually limit any rows in the table because it doesn't check any columns in the table. So it...

If you remove all the case logic and just execute the query with the join intact, do you still get the duplicate rows?

Can you post the actual function and the sql that's calling it?

The original definition would hold

1234567890123456.123456

The new definition won't. So if you have a number with greater than 14 positions left of the decimal, you'll get a message. That's...

What does:

round(cast(sum(columnname) as numeric(5,3))*100.00,3)

give you?

Haven't tried this, but you could set them up with the db_datareader role in the Model database. When Model is copied as the basis for any new database, the...

I don't see where the code you posted could have generated that error. Is there another trigger on that table? How did you determine the error originated in...

The create database is run in the context of the account under which the sql sever is running. Check the permissions for that account, not your account.

WOW! If you calculate the value of 1 point as the combined hourly rate of all the people who have posted about this question, SQL Server Central should probably...

If the process loading the data is a scheduled job, I'd put the csv creation into the job as another step. If it's a user-initiated process, you could have...

If you're not doing any other summation or grouping, I'm not sure you'll find anything more efficient than the straight 'select' in my question. It would only touch the...

Not a solution, just a clarification, you need the cumulative total adding each month to the previous month like

select opco, region, country, jan as [jan],

...

So, normally I don't weigh in on stuff like this, but here goes. Your original post speculated that your difficulties were caused by the lack of brainpower at Microsoft,...

A SQL Profiler trace might give them a clue, and if you can get the app into some kind of debug mode with verbose diagnostics, that might help also. ...