I have found that NVARCHAR, NCHAR, and NTEXT are rarely useful even in multi-lingual applications.

The Welsh use CHRW(333) but will tollerate the standard ASCII equivalent.

The Indic languages Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi,...

So if I have a temp table with id IDENTITY, field1....field n

and I write

INSERT mytemptable(field1...fieldn)

SELECT field1....fieldn

FROM dbo.mysourcetable

ORDER BY field2, field4

The IDENTITY values won't be in order of field2 and 4?

Strangely enough you can achieve quite a bit with just SQL Query Analyser and the template functions.

Right-clicking on an option and choosing "Script to new window as..." allows the rapid...

Well the APEX stuff isn't free but it is very good. If you start with a shrink wrapped ApexSQL Doc and a cup of coffee it will pay for...

Do I have to go through the all the CreateObject("ADODB.Command") stuff to execute a query to get the count back or is there a quicker way of doing this?

In the UK estate agents have their own dialect of English.

Agent: A property with a sea view.

English: Its on a crumbling cliff top that recedes at 6ft per...

The row size limit comes into play if the DATA exceeds 8096 bytes not if the STRUCUTRE exceeds 8096 bytes.

I seem to recall that for TEXT and NTEXT only 16...

Thanks Noggin, that fixed it

Use the TEXT or NTEXT datatype. In SQL2005 use VARCHAR(MAX) or NVARCHAR(MAX).

This gives you 2GB of text.

In SQL2000 the text itself is not stored in the row, only the...

I thought that the @@RETURN_VALUE is intrinsic to the RETURN statement. I didn't think you could set it at will.

I tend to use positive values greater than zero to...

I was revisiting the problem I posed in http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=21&messageid=229499

The child table has an identity field called SelectionId which isn't mentioned in the schema at all and yet the bulk...

"Good" and "cursor" in the same sentence.

"Old Fashioned" is OK, it implies that something has worked

You can emphasise standards as much as you like with regard to XML but this is a data entry issue.

If you have required fields on a form within an application...

This might work a bit faster

DECLARE @ProcName sysname ,

@usercredentials sysname

set @procname=''

set @usercredentials='Development'

WHILE @procname is not null

begin

SELECT @procname = min(name)

FROM sysobjects

WHERE xtype='P' and name > @procname and name not like 'dt_%'

IF...

I take your point but DATTIME fields can hold values up to 31-Dec-9999. If you use a date that ridiculously far in the future then you DATEDIFF should always...