I'm with Jeff on this - lots of what is on that are personal preferences and should be decided by each team/organization

For example I do not allow any uppercase  so...

your "requirements" do not match what you trying to do on the sql so please do clarify it exactly.

To get the records added today - which is what...

from the description you are then opening that CSV file with Excel and you wish them to automatically have a particular format applied.

This is not possible with CSV files -...

not just ssms.

SQL Server Agent will grab it immediately if it is active - always stop the service if doing maintenance

but other servers (monitoring tools for example) can also grab...

possibly another process grabbing the admin session before you can do it.

I would try and use the -m startup option with a program name associated. e.g. -mSQLCMD and then connect...

please please do NOT use cursors for this

standard construct for a batch update where you have a KEY (or set of columns) that you can use to filter what has...

Sam - did you read my comments?

Adding those indexes are not necessarily what needs to be done (as recommendations from the engine are just that)

and is the field I mentioned...

I'm curious - do you have 2 processors with 5 cores each with HT active? or 2 * 10 cores = 20 HT?

Regardless of it I would probably change that...

your "requirements" do not match what you trying to do on the sql so please do clarify it exactly.

To get the records added today - which is what your subquery...

you need to learn to explain your requirements better - just stating that for a small sample of data you need this output is not enough.

Even with the latest output...

Apologies I should have remove the t1. from the order by when I added the outer select to filter on balance.

Now you have added a further block inside the query....

select *
from (
    select t1.Account
         , isnull(
         ...

without having sample data its hard to tell.

but try

$Failed  = $csv | Where-Object {$csv.Result -eq 'Failed'}|select -property Batfile

what was the exact create index statement?

and if this was on the same machine that you have with a maxdop of 1 that is likely normal and in this case...

Always makes wonder when I see a machine with 12 cores and maxdop = 1.

Has it been proven that for this machine this is the correct setting or was this...