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...

p.s.  Just to save face... if this is NOT a simple denormalized reporting table, you need to change my statement from...

"and everyone who has code that adds columns uses the...

Both methods are good... so long as you are in the correct data base and the table actually exists in that data base...

if it doesn't, the code will not...

Concur... my point exactly...

Yep... I know that xp_CmdShell is "serial" and not asynchronus in nature... that's why I normally check the data before I put it in a trigger.  But, I have seen...

Think "language barrier" and email mono-tones folks... Sometimes folks get pretty short and it isn't meant to be rude... it just sounds that way.  Add English as a second language...

I just did a quick read on this... it is possible to write to a table from within a trigger and not have it roll back but only if you...

Considering that the original poster had troubles with the dynamic SQL to create the column, you might want to demo how to test for the column's existance with some generic...