Jules,

The real fact of the matter is, both the ISNULL and the OR method really stink up the room in this situation (NULL being treated as "future dated")...

To answer the...

Outstanding, Serqiy... at least SOMEBODY tried this and it figures that it would be you

Actually, I whole heartedly agree with you...

"REAL" certainly doesn't work that way on my box...

select convert ( real ,2.5000 )
select convert ( real ,10.0000)
select convert ( real ,20.0000)
select convert ( real ,2.0500 )
select convert (...

Heh... on Brian's note, Steve... I'm thinking "get the glue".

Mark,

I'm thinking that you did not try the code.  Use the table build code to build the table and the related indexes.  Then do an execution plan on the code...

Can you "sticky" this to the SQLServerCentral home page (ie. "How to ask a question and what to do with the answer" section) and force newbies to do a read (wishful...

Make sure you run the code several times where indicated... you'll both be surprised... and remember the situation may change if a join is involved...

--Drop table MyHead

GO

--===== Create...

Actually, since RedGate just procurred this site, try RedGate SQL Compare

Yes, it will fail if your server isn't setup to "see" the path.  The SQL Server "service" must be started as a power user that can "see" the UNC path...

IF you will always have 4 columns, then this will work nicely...

DECLARE @TestText VARCHAR(100)

    SET @TestText = 'FIN - TIN - LIN - BIN'

 SELECT PARSENAME(REPLACE(@TestText,' -...

You bet, Sol,

Sorry for the apparent rambling  in my last post... was a bit late and I just started typing without much thought to...

James,

I did a search in BOL 2005 and on google... couldn't find reference to a FIRST or LAST function.  Probably my problem since I don't use 2005, yet, but do...

Heh... Good luck, Yves.

Kinda like when your car runs bad but you won't let the mechanic pop the hood, isn't it Sol?  Heck, I don't even know what your "car" looks like...

Yep... I realize that my response is a year late, but well done, Chris... Very nice intro to some of the performance measuring tools that are available in SQL Server.

Just...