Just a thought... How do you read sequentially from a table without a cursor or loop?  Except for the occasional control loop on processes that handle thousands or millions of...

Just out of curiosity, can someone who has SQL Server 2005 (unfortunately, I don't) tell me how long that bit of code takes to run?  Thanks.

Actually, I'm sorry... I normally don't turn things into a race.  Just meant to show an alternative. 

No matter what method you use, your article hits upon something that a...

Thanks for the feedback.  Guess it's whatever you want.  If today is a business day and the start date and end date are both today, I want it to register...

Just having a bunch of idexes may not help a thing...

Try these...

CREATE INDEX IX_Sales_Composite1 ON Sales (UserID,LineNumber,Amount)
CREATE INDEX IX_Punctuation_Composite1 ON Punctuation (UserID,StartLineNumber,StopLineNumber,Dated)

But, that's more correlated subqueries... why not use a simple join for the WHERE EXISTS?

Heh... yeah, I crossed out the wrong part, huh?  Shouldn't post when I'm pooped.  Thanks, Serqiy.

Heh... Thanks Jacob...

Ok... apples to apples on the last bit of code... the following takes 1:09 including the PK.

--===== Create and populate a test table.

     -- Column "SomeDate"...

Nope... from BOL...

Lesser of batch size or 250 MB

Yeah... but I hate Oracle

Go for broke... read up on WITH CUBE in BOL... that's where they teach you about the GROUPING function that works both with ROLLUP and CUBE.

The outer join certainly does the trick but the subquery wasn't the problem... the fact that you made it a correlated subquery may have been.

select * from TableA

where ID not...

Jacob,

Your idea is great but your code is too complex for what it does and it takes too long to run... for example, you say the code to produce a...

I agree with Ed on both points... The fact that you are even considering some standardized method of formatting is a huge step in the right direction.  And, whatever format...

But you have the same problem commenting out the first line... Yes?