Phil:

The issue is that when I try to import *.xlsx files using either SSIS / SSMS (Import Data option), I get the error "Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 Provider Is Not Registered" /...

To be honest, I don't really have a problem with people posting the same problem on multiple forums.  After...

To be honest, I had come to the same conclusion and wanted to see what the reaction would be with a mostly code only response rather than the uncoded suggestion...

Well do ya?  Enquiring minds want to know! 😀

I've probably missed them.  Which post did you attach them to?

Sure.  Get rid of the UNION ALL and change the second part of that to an INSERT/SELECT.

Jeff, Hi

try this instead

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/15/fear-freedom-doom-laded-government-graphs-dont-show-us/?fbclid=IwAR30zEscQDhPlr1KR0JWI5nFBz3un5_JLBoC4ZMPAdLVm74aoSLwCgk8k84

but in case you don't read newspapers either (too much bad news) the article was entitled

"Fear over freedom: Here's what the doom-laden government graphs didn't...

The PIVOT in the second part of your dynamic query creates integers for the count and that is what is being evaluated first in the creation of the table by...

I'm going to suggest that before you do anything else that you upgrade your new 2017 (RTM) server to the latest CU.  There were quite a few nasty little performance...

Do you understand how the following works?

 SELECT *
   FROM [dbo].[checkportions]
  WHERE GPNSignature LIKE PortionKey+'[^0-9]%'
;

I'll also state that if this type of thing has...

The reason I made the suggestion above is because the code that you think is perfect is doing 10 table scans on your test data.  Your...

I would actually be seriously concerned about this. There are a whole lot of things not being considered and I'm thinking it'll be pretty easy, because of missing data, for...

I don't have the time to try it out tonight even with the great test data posted but look at the STRING_AGG function again.  It does...

As you point out, implicit conversions on table columns (example, table column is VARCHAR(), lookup or join value is NVARCHAR()) is really bad especially for blocking.  That, of course, is...

Heh... it's also how people interpret things.   Remember the old joke about bananas?

After a 2 year study, it's been found that people eat more bananas than monkeys.

It must...