You don't need to build  a function for this... if you are always guaranteed to have 3 parts, then there's a function built into SQL Server... ya just gotta give...

You can use the hack, or you can use the functionality built into SQL Sever...

SELECT DATENAME(dw,GETDATE())+' '+CONVERT(CHAR(11),GETDATE(),106)

Ummmm... why not just setup a standard maintenance plan from Enterprise Manager whick, I believe, will do all of that for you.

A better way to do this for the sake of performance is...

 SELECT tab1.*

   FROM tab1

   LEFT OUTER JOIN tab2

     ON tab1.Col1 = tab2.Col1

        tab1.Col2 = tab2.Col2

       ...

Ah yes, absolutely true... I sometimes just forget about things I'm not allowed to use and, unfortunately, I work in a shop where .Net is not allowed.  Don't know why...

Thanks Ray... that's just what I was looking for.  Dunno if ANSI allows for derived tables but I guess I'm going to find...

The key is in the snippet Kenneth posted...

Francis, I know exactly what you're going through... I just inherited yet another monster set of databases and I think among all the SQL procs, views, and udfs, there might...

If you just want your script to give you info from yesterday no matter what today is, you don't need FLOAT and you don't need to pass a date.  I...

Not sure why you'd want to do that when a good maintenance plan will achieve the same result of having properly ordered and defragmented indexes.  So, I have to ask,...

Verrryyyy nice, David... One of the better articles I've seen on this type of stuff.  And, if someone takes the time to read it, there are all sorts of goodies...

Right on, Serqiy...

I agree but...

I've found that when the "boss", who doesn't really know how to use a spreadsheet, says he wants to open the result set using Excel from a CSV...

...and, if you do write the TEXT out to a text file for execution, use OSQL instead of ISQL because ISQL is deprecated compared to OSQL.

Just an opinion but both...

I had a feeling you were one of the smart ones.    Thanks for the feedback.