Very cool... thank you.

I did a bunch of experiments on several different machines (desktop, 4 cpu server, 8 cpu server, etc) about 9 months ago and the results are posted somewhere on this...

Serqiy, cool function... especially great for bi-monthly paydays on the 1st & 15th, etc.

Bellefso... this returns the first date of the current month... was in both Serqiy's and my examples...

SELECT

In a function, instead of (over simplified example)...

If someconda

set a variable to value 1

If somecondb

set a variable to value 2

..etc..

I use,

SELECT somevariable = CASE

WHEN someconda THEN value 1

WHEN somecondb...

I finally found one at

http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql.html

Is your's any better?

I'm still looking for the function that will split a 2gb string on a delimiter, Serqiy... any chance of you posting it or the URL you got it from?  Thank...

I wondered when you were going to show up on this one

I agree about the BEGIN/END where no transaction is defined... however, if you check out Books Online, you'll find that BEGIN/END is required syntax in UDF's

Sorry... didn't see Remi's solution, which is obviously spot on! 

If this in in a complex GROUP BY, forget COUNT... you have a condition and COUNT isn't going to do it for you... SUM(CASE will....

 SELECT your bunch of...

Not sure how you're using it, but "IF" smacks of Cursors, While Loops, and other forms of "RBAR"... if you really want you code to fly, write it set-based with...

I know it's just an experiment but, ugh... if you end up counting transactions in your code, ya just might have a bigger problem with your application...

First, not sure how you'd do a like with the values "mashed" together even if you were looking at a single column.  I can tell you that anytime you can...

Ok.... thought you'd gone nuts on me for a minute   Short naps get me through the day

Be patient with me, Serqiy... I'm confused ... I thought you were saying before that you didn't need SQL, just the file system...