GG,

Heh... ok about the aesthetics thing... I don't agree about it being unsettling about having "skip" numbers show up, but I'm also not in your position nor do I know...

Perfect... thanks for that and great answer... good code, too!

Amrita??? How about you?  You started this thread... why do YOU need to do...

Heh... and this is the SECOND one on the same subject...

Heh... absolutely agree on that!  And the "Hardware Support" may even include the mundane... like changing toner cartridges on a printer

Wait a minute... if the first one was the "ulitimate" solution, then ?????

All of this is good, folks, but no one has asked...

Wasn't generating scripts on the fly... thought you were.  Was trying to get around doing that.  So, I'm confused as to what you are trying to do... thought you had...

Thanks, Chris... appreciate that...

Karthik... how about you... what are you going to use this for?  The "select random rows" problem is pretty rare in SQL and I'm still curious what...

Thanks for coming back with that... lots of us end up wondering if we actually helped or confused.  Really appreciate the feedback even if it is a bit later than...

Not being a smart guy here... was very interested in what you said...

MS says that frequent operations requiring...

Just being a bit silly here... how about "1 man/woman IT department who knows something about everything?"

... or less silly... "DBA and Jack of all trades"?

[after playing out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War]

Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.

Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.

Joshua: A strange game. The...

Not trying to be a smart guy or anything... really trying to help...

In a single-company app, we...

I don't know because I've never done it... why have I never done it???  Because, as most folks will tell you, it's usually a very bad idea to do so......

Very nicely done, Robert... but if you need to do this for a whole table, you'll either need to make a function, or some form of double nested While loop......

Thanks... had a feeling that's what you were going to say... was hoping you had something different than we did... we got our 3rd party problem child working without deadlocking using most...