Just in case all the soft answers haven't made an impression...

If you use *=, you will suffer death by SQL 😉 Don't use it.

Just an observation... although you might be able to get away with it a lot of times, not having a column list associated with the INSERT part of an INSERT/SELECT...

...and, if you have less that 250 or so databases, the following will beat the pants off your cursor 😉

[font="Courier New"]--===== Declare local variables

DECLARE @sql VARCHAR(8000) --Holds the dynamic SQL

--=====...

Line 24 is the USE statement that you currently have commented out... the operand of the USE statement cannot be a variable. You will need to use dynamic SQL.

Wouldn't it just be easier to create two identical tables... have a surrogate passthrough view pointed at 1 for access while the other is being loaded. When all done...

Ummm... no... what doesn't make sense is why anyone would need to have more than 300 NVARCHAR(MAX) columns in a table...

Heh... that's why I sometimes hate BOL... here's the definition of "subquery" according to BOL which, incidently, agrees with Ramesh's definition...

A subquery is a SELECT query that returns a...

TheSQLGuru (11/5/2007)

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1) It is a common mistake to think that join clause conditionals and where clause conditionals will equate. But there is a vast difference in where the restriction...

sdjuricic (11/5/2007)

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Thanks for your reply,

Reason why we are using temporary tables in oracle is that we have a query engine that besides doing sql queries on a relational database it...

JJ B (11/5/2007)

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"Pay you now or pay you later." How about pay you never? I work in a place that can't afford real DBAs, not even as occasional consultants. They...

Andy Warren (11/5/2007)

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I agree that taking on debt around performance isn't a good idea, and Im not advocating bad design from the start either!

As a consultant its rare that...

The reason I asked is that I produced two identical actual execution plans, one of which was less code, and which also proved Sergiy wrong, and you stated that the...

That's a great article, Andy... I've never seen justification of doing it wrong put so eloquently. 😛 The problem with even the Type II Technical Debt is that...

I'm thinking "interview", "test", or "homework" question 😉

James Stover (11/4/2007)

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Arrogant DBA's, eh?

"What's that you say Mr. Web Developer? Just "put it in"? Sure, I'll stay up to 3am troubleshooting & optimizing your masterpiece while you are...