I have to second James' thanks, and I'm sure there are many others who feel the same and just don't say it enough. With the knowledge I've gained here at...

Wayne West (9/17/2008)

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Jeff Moden (9/16/2008)

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... The real key is that I have a good friend that I argue with/agree with once in a while. He said something I'll never...

Carla Wilson (9/12/2008)

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Thanks for testing and comparing the performance of PATINDEX, LIKE and CHARINDEX! You've inspired me to test some of my procedures. Looks like they could benefit...

Happy birthday, Steve!

At the moment, I'd say a Kindle http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/62941/ would be nice, although then I'd have to have time to actually use it. Tools would be good, but like...

David Reed (9/11/2008)

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I also worked for an IP law firm that did a lot of suing back in the '90s, and the bill rates were nice. Does that make me...

Steve Jones - Editor (9/11/2008)

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Mark,

The problem is that this guy might have been "successful" as a DBA at his last job. Perhaps another group ran backups using Tivoli or something...

Your solution works if the original set is small, like your example of 'January:February:March', but as you pointed out, gets ugly the larger your string gets.

Two things -

1)...

IceDread (9/11/2008)

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"idiocy can NEVER be a crime"

I dissagree. Ignorence or idiocy can never be used as an excuse to commit a crime. It is your responsibility to know the law...

I got mugged at the grocery store this morning, and it's the police chief's fault, because he wasn't there to stop it. Actually, it's the security guard's fault, because he...

Spackle first to fill in any holes, sand, prime and then use a roller with a 3/8 inch nap. And...

Steve Jones - Editor (9/8/2008)

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You have to try and collaborate, try and help, but at the same time you have to meet your responsibilities.

Management has to see this, perhaps by...

Ok, so I've seen some half-answers to this question, but my pea-brain needs a clear response to this:

I'm working in an environment where the reporting server is only updated once...

That's always the argument against organization,...

GilaMonster (9/4/2008)

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If the data is not changing a lot, then you are probably not running into lock waits and hence nolock won't help much. Nolock is not a silver bullet...

It looks from your initial few posts that the filename will actually be something like File20050801.txt, where you're incorporating the date. If that is true, and the date will always...