SELECT TOP 10 WITH TIES should do the trick

Have you a specific example?

Can you post the code for the function?

Have you specified the arguments?

You can't nest these sorts of queries either.

If proc1 contains an INSERT...exec then you can't have a procedure that inserts the results of proc1.

If it is a cheque number does it have to be recorded as a physical number?  Can it be kept as a sting?

Computers do integer arithmetic accurately.  The golden rule...

Thanks for your help,

I've had to correct 537 filenames by hand.

You can't turn it off, but you can set the transaction log to truncate on checkpoint.  This is the same as "Simple" recovery mode.

Could you just confirm that when you say my sql database you mean your sql server database and not MySQL database?

If you do mean the latter then the following command...

I thought the contest was supposed to be SQL Server specific.

If I had known it was more general I could have told a few stories that would have made your...

I couldn't think of a good use for FIRST and LAST even when I was using Access.  If I needed such functions then I was almost certainly looping through records...

Never occurred to me that these were (mis)managers. 

Would you say that Dilbert was the rantings of a disgruntled employee?

Any similarities between persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Problems don't just vanish.  I suspect that a.n.other process is the true cause of the problem this will come back to haunt you.

I would build up a string message in...

Float and Real are for approximate values only.

How realistic is your '9999999999999999999999998' figure?

Its when they tell you to cut up old Christmas cards to save on toilet paper that you have to worry.

My eyes still water when I see a card with...

So, if you rebuild and index with a low fill factor you get lots of pages with lots of room in them and therefore more space to insert records before...

No, MIN returns the minimum value, FIRST returns the first occurence.